Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, picking the right lead generation agency among the countless agencies that exist is not always easy. 

That’s mainly because:

• There might be some confusion as to how some agencies define “lead.”
• Most agencies are both expensive and inexperienced, and their results can’t cover your costs. 
• The majority of lead gen agencies market “job-to-be-done” (i.e., Send 5000 emails per month) versus selling outcome (i.e., We generate 10 leads for you per month). 

When on the market for the best lead generation agency, you want to make sure the agency you’re bringing in has a track record of solving similar issues, and they can drive qualified leads toward your sales teams.

In this article, we’ll cover the mistakes most companies make when hiring agencies and how to find the best one.

What YOU and lead generation agencies get wrong about working together

When outsourcing your client acquisition to a lead generation agency, it’s common to believe that it’ll be plain sailing and that soon you’ll be able to scale trials and demos.

But in actual fact, it is not always so straightforward. Here are some common pitfalls for agencies and clients alike and how you can avoid them.

Mistake 1: Wanting and promising results too fast

The majority of outbound lead generation agencies are great at promising to deliver results in a very short timeframe. Some even offer guaranteed leads from day one.

The reason for this is that you as a client make an investment and expect results much faster than is reasonable. 

That’s a big mistake for many reasons:

1. Unless the lead generation agency you’re working with knew about your business in and out before the start of your engagement, it’s almost impossible for them to get you leads from Day 1.
2. Every company has its unique buyer’s journey and sales cycle — so is yours. And so even if your lead generation agency has a proven process, the chances it applies to your specific case are really thin. 
3. The nature of your product or service can affect how fast you see tangible results in your outbound lead generation.

For instance, business to business purchases involve several decision-makers who can influence the purchase decision. And because of this, selling services and products to B2B clients can require long sales cycles.

So, it stands to reason that for such companies it can take much longer to fully benefit from lead generation services. 

Mistake 2: Adopting a one-size-fits-all approach for everything

There is no off-the-shelf solution for lead generation. 

Each product solves a specific problem in a slightly different way and each company has its own audience that is slightly different from others. 

That said, even products that address the exact same problem may do so with different features, making each “competing” product cater to a certain demographic, a certain niche, and a certain level of expertise. 

And of course, this has a direct impact on the marketing strategy that the company should adopt.

Consider the difference between these two SaaS companies.

Company A: a self-serve SaaS product that has a free trial

Company B: an enterprise-level SaaS product that requires some installations and integrations. 

Obviously, Company A’s lead generation activities might be more channel-focused with the aim of driving traffic to its free trial page. 

Whereas Company B’s strategy would be much more suited to longer-term lead nurturing, account-based marketing (ABM), and more emphasis on outbound activities.

So, avoid working with lead generation agencies that have proven processes that they think may work for your business.

Of course, some of their processes may apply to your business, but that’s after they listened to you and got to know your business in and out. 

Mistake 3: Not getting aligned as to what success metrics should be with your lead generation company

Success metrics make it possible for your team to gauge in a quantifiable and predictable way your progress and the results of the cold email agency you outsource to. 

By setting metric-based goals, you can evaluate your lead-to-close rate, your lead-to-prospect rate, your time-to-close rate, and most importantly, your revenue per lead.

Here’s how you can calculate each of these.

1 – Lead-to-prospect rate

Lead-to-prospect rate is the percentage of leads that move on to become prospects. In general, there is confusion between a lead and a prospect. 

Understand that a lead is an unqualified contact, while a prospect is a qualified contact that you have walked through your sales qualification process to determine if your company’s products or services are suitable for their needs. 

Here’s the formula you need to calculate your lead-to-prospect rate:

2 – Lead-to-close rate

The lead-to-close rate represents the percentage of leads that are eventually converted into customers. This is the most basic, yet the high-level view of the quality of the leads from your lead generation agency. 

Here is the simplest formula for calculating your lead-to-close rate.

Note that a “good” lead-to-close rate varies substantially by industry and that a sub-par performance can be attributed to a variety of factors other than lead quality alone.

3 – Time-to-close rate

The time-to-close rate is the average time it takes for a lead to turn into a buyer. Like many other metrics, it is useful to calculate and compare the time to close between different campaigns.

Here’s a formula.

Time-to-close is critical in that it gives you a good indication of where a prospect is in the sales process — it is obvious that those further along in the process will have a shorter closing time. 

Picking up leads that are further along in the sales process benefits the company in terms of cash flow and saves time for the sales team. 

4 – Revenue per lead

Revenue per lead is the revenue derived from a set of leads divided by the total number of leads. 

It helps answer the most crucial question about lead generation: are these leads really worth the investment?

Here’s how you can calculate your revenue per lead.

Mistake 4: Having the agency and the client’s sales and marketing teams work

Traditionally, the sales and marketing teams used to work in silos — segmented from each other. While the marketing team handled the top of the funnel, the sales team would handle the bottom of the funnel.

When a prospect was deemed sales-ready, they would be passed on to sales, and in many cases, such prospects would never hear from marketing again.

In other words, marketers use a lead generation strategy to generate leads, nurture and turn them into qualified leads, then pass them along to sales teams, and that’s it.

Unfortunately, this linear process is no longer possible in today’s world. Especially not when you outsource lead generation.

If you ever hope to get optimal results, not only do your sales and marketing teams need to work collaboratively, but they also need to align with your lead generation agency. 

Why? 

Because they all have the same goal of driving sales and revenue. 

It all goes from a lead generation strategy to get more leads — based on a well-defined target audience — to an (email) marketing funnel for nurturing leads and a sales funnel to convert leads. They are all related.

So, it is crucial to keep them in sync for better communication and collaboration and clear lead generation goals. 

The lead generation agency might need to talk to a few of your customers to better their ideal customer profile.

When you succeed in uniting your sales, marketing, and outsourced lead gen teams’ around a single revenue cycle, they will drastically improve marketing return on investment (ROI), sales productivity, and, most importantly, top-line growth.

When do you need a lead generation agency?

Every company needs to grow, but not all of them need to resort to lead generation agencies. 

You need a lead generation agency when:

• You want or need to focus on booking appointments (through cold calling or cold email); or
• You have steady growth but want a proven methodology to double down on generating leads. In other words, you’re not in a “get 10 MQLs or die” mode; or
• You have the resources, you are ready, and you need lead generation specialists to try and understand how your audience thinks; or
• You’re thinking long-term relationship with your audience; and/or
• You want and are ready to trust your led generation agency with the strategy they come up with.
• You had no prior digital marketing or online marketing strategy and lacked sales qualified leads.
• You want to increase sales steadily through lead generation efforts and build a base of loyal customers.

You’re not ready to resort to or don’t need a lead generation agency if:

• You don’t know exactly how many leads you need to sustain your year-over-year growth; or
• You have crazy expectations; or
• You are in dire need of marketing qualified leads to keep running your business; or
• Your service or product is broken; or
• Your positioning is broken; or
• You expect the agency to do everything; or
• You have a dedicated and experienced team of experts working full-time on lead gen; 
• You want blog post content marketing, search engine optimization, and creating content for your social media platforms.

10 smart questions to ask a B2B lead generation agency

As mentioned above, choosing and hiring a lead generation agency to outsource to can be a tough decision. 

And for that matter, if your priority is cold emailing, the choice can be even tougher because if you hire the wrong agency, you are going to lose money. 

To avoid that, here are some questions you need to ask before closing the deal.

1 – What’s their definition of a lead?

Maybe for you, a lead is when someone shows an interest in your product. Or maybe when they reach out directly to your sales and ask for the product.

Lead generation experts might have a different definition. Maybe for them, any person that downloads something or does something as little as clicking on a link is a lead.  

So, make you clarify what a lead is and that you both agree on what success would translate into. 

2 – Do they specialize in your niche?

It applies to every type of digital marketing and lead generation as well.

It’s always easier to generate leads from a specific target market when you already know you already know how to speak to them, how to find leads and build lead lists or prospect lists, the right sales funnel, the email marketing approach, etc.

That’s why niche experience matters.

Your lead generation experts’ experience in your niche can make the difference between the quality and the lifetime value they provide your business and what you get from other agencies. 

3 – How do they ensure high-quality leads?

The hardest part of lead generation is to ensure a quality prospect list in the first place.

Scrapping a list of lead gen tools and sending hundreds of emails per minute is not the way to go. Having a lead generation partner who can search for your potential customers and build quality lead lists is priceless.

So, talk to your target lead gen company and ensure they have a reliable way of getting leads. Also, make sure that the way they acquire leads aligns with your business. 

4 – What’s their marketing philosophy?

How do they target customers? Are they aggressive in their messaging?

Are they in it to simply advertise your products or do they painstakingly create outreach sequences that offer value to the recipients before asking them to take an action? 

5 – How do they report to clients?

You will want to know how your B2B lead generation agency is cooking things up to bring customers. So, you will want to know how often they report and what they report on. 

6 – Does the lead generation team source or purchase leads through another company or are they generated in-house?

The way your target lead gen company generates leads is indicative of the quality of the results you get. Companies that purchase lists are basically sending emails to random people.

They’re simply through rocks at a wall to see what sticks. That’s not what you want. You need your lead gen company to properly conduct research, identify your ideal customer profile and build quality lists. 

7 – Does the lead generation team comply with data protection laws?

There are lots of spam laws out there in almost every aspect of digital marketing. Most laws differ from one location to another.

You don’t want to generate leads and wind up paying fines. Discuss and ensure that they abide by the different laws that pertain to your target audience. 

8 – How much (and when) do they charge for their service?

Whatever service they promise, there won’t be any leads generated if you can’t afford them. So, you’ll also need to know how much they charge for the service and how that fits into your budget. 

9 – What’s their plan to ensure your ROI?

So do they ensure you get a good ROI? You may be able to quickly see the value you get.

For example, you can easily see that generating 4 paying customers will make up for your investment.

But you’ll also need to figure out whether it is sustainable for you budget-wise. Also, they may not be able to deliver every month. Still, you pay. So, what happens then?

10 – Do they use your mailbox for outreach?

So, will they be using your mailbox for the outreach or use one of their own? You also have to figure that out.

Will they be sending emails that indicate they are third-party outreach specialists or will it feel like it is your organization reaching out to them?

How to hire a lead generation agency: red flags to look out for

Here are a few red flags you’ll need to avoid when looking for or working with a lead generation company. 

Poor reporting

Poor reporting will hurt the collaboration. Your target lead generation agency needs to specify KPIs and metrics and establish a reporting frequency. 

After all, if you invest in something, you deserve to know how it’s going and what the return on your investment might be. 

Poor communication

You need to have frequent communication with your lead generation agency. 

This can be about figuring out new approaches, getting updates on strategy adoptions, discussing engagement and results, and more. 

You need to have a routine-based conversation to ensure everything is going well. 

This is what gives you visibility into their work and everything else. 

Poor communication will leave you in the dark. So, make sure you have clear communication before getting started together. 

No documented process

You don’t want to work with an agency that is just figuring things out. That’s one of the main reasons most people struggle to work with digital marketing companies.

Plus, it’s a clear lack of professionalism and a no-no for you if you want serious, predictable results. 

No proven results

It can be hard to sell intangible services like lead generation and we get it. But you need to ensure your target B2B lead generation agency has already achieved the results they’re promising you at least once. 

No clarity as to when to expect the results

This might not be a specific date, but you’ll need a timeframe to work with.

You can possibly expect results for ages while you need ROI to grow your business. So, make sure you get clarity as to when you’ll be getting results. 

Why the first 30 months of the relationships are so crucial to the lead gen campaign’s success & how we work with our clients at Nerdy Joe

Week 1: Onboarding

Our services are productized and self-served — meaning we won’t have hours of back and forth. 

We basically have several plans and once you choose the one that fits your current needs and budget, you’ll be taken to a cart where you can purchase the plan. 

After that, you’ll get an invoice plus a welcome email. We will give you access to a Basecamp Project. That’s basically where we’ll collaborate and communicate on the to-dos and the campaign results. 

Once in the project, we’ll have an asynchronous conversation that’ll help us know more about your business and your ideal customer profile, and target companies.

Those will be done within Day 1 and 2 of onboarding. 

During those days, we’d aslo assign you some to-dos like purchasing a domain, giving us your domain credentials, and setting up your DKIM, DMARC, etc.

We can basically set up those but if you prefer, we’ll leave it to you. We’ll also start warming up your domain before we launch the campaign. 

Between Day 3 and Day 5, we’ll identify and define your ideal customer, start profiling the ideal people to reach out to, and once you validate the list, we’ll go on and find their email addresses and research each account and add the email opening lines. 

We’ll also write the cold email copy based on your tone of voice, brand messaging, and style guide.

Outcomes at the end of week 1

• Domain name set up.
• DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc., set up.
• A working list of prospects to reach out to.
• Each account is researched and there’s enough information to personalize it.
• The email copy for the campaign is ready.
• The domain is being warmed up. 

Week 2: Implementation

In the first days of week 2, we start by making sure everything is in place, that we’re aligned in terms of messaging and that everything about each account is correct. 

We also launch a first pilot campaign with some prospects from our list to test our copy, messaging, and setup.

Based on data from that pilot, we identify room for improvement, iterate, and revamp our setup before we deploy the entire campaign. 

Note: It sometimes happens that we hit our goal with that pilot campaign. For instance, if the plan you chose is for us to book 3 meetings for you per month, it may happen that we hit this goal with the pilot.

In this case, you can either upgrade your plan or we pause until the next month to continue the campaign (in the event you renew your plan).

Starting from Day 3, we deploy the campaign at scale — leveraging our learnings and results from the pilot. We also start monitoring results and some important metrics like clickthrough rate, reply rate, and bounce rate.

We basically want to make sure the metrics are circa our benchmarks and that we’re getting everything right.   

Meanwhile, we also keep working on your target customers’ list, the account personalization, and follow-up emails.

Outcomes at the end of week 2

• The open rate of above 50%
• Reply rate averaging 20 – 25%
• Monthly goal hit or halfway achieved
• A bigger prospect list 
• Some early campaign results 

Week 3: Iteration

Week 3 is usually when we start to see results. I mean, CONSISTENTLY. We use the statistics and findings from the first two weeks to iterate the messaging, targeting, offer, and calls to action. 

We then launch the campaign at scale and work to achieve our campaign goals. 

We intentionally aim to hit our goals in Week 3 to avoid last-minute pressures but also to prepare for the next month’s campaign. 

Outcomes at the end of week 3

• At this point, we certainly hit our target
• Monthly strategy call
• Campaign wraps up

Week 4: Wrapping up

The fourth week is when we try to wrap up the campaign and prepare for the next month’s campaign. 

It depends, of course, on whether you approach and confirms your plan for the following month.

Preparing for the next month allows you to save time on certain tasks and maximize the results. 

For example:

• We will keep warming up your domain
• We’ll extend your target list
• We’ll segment the list 
• We’ll research the leads in advance
• And more.

But in case you don’t want to continue with your subscription, we just hand you the previous campaign material and call it a month.

Key Takeaways

• Whatever the lead generation company you decide to work with, your first 30 days will determine how everything plays out eventually. So, it’s always a great idea to stay patient for the first month and record the red flags you see and whether or not they’re a fit for your needs. 
• Keep in mind that hiring a lead generation company always comes with some uncertainties. Your goal in the hiring process is to ensure that both parties have clear and realistic expectations about the other. 
• Always make sure you ask the right questions before you sign off on a deal with your lead generation company. This is important for ensuring you stay on the same wavelength throughout your collaboration. 

Most link building outreach emails aren’t compelling enough.

• They’re either generic with zero personalization.
• They don’t give blog owners and content marketing managers a reason to link back to your sites.
• They are poorly written and often end up in the spam folder.

At Nerdy Joe, we’ve had our fair share of link building outreach campaign. We’ve figured out the best way to secure links and it has earned us links from brands like Sumo, ButterCMS, VideoForm, Hyperise, etc.

But how do you craft those emails that effectively? 

We’re so glad you asked.

In this blog post, we’ll teach you how to create backlink requests outreach campaigns. We’ll also discuss the different types of backlink request emails, the elements of a successful backlink request email, share the best backlink request email templates, and tips for crafting a successful backlink request email.

What makes a successful backlink request email?

Here are the elements you need to put together to come up with the best emails for your backlink request campaigns. 

Mind you; these elements can also help you appreciate the link building email outreach templates we’ll share with you later on.

So, let’s discuss them. 

A great icebreaker

Most of the people you’ll be reaching out to don’t know who you are. There is also a good chance they’ve never come across your website before.

So, you are coming into the unknown, and you need a good first impression to catch their attention and hook them to read your email. 

So, to do this, you need an icebreaker. As the name implies, icebreakers are email opening lines designed to help you break the ice between you and your recipients. 

Here are the different things having an icebreaker means for your outreach:

1. an opening line that doesn’t strike the audience, like “I’m here for a backlink, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
2. an opening line that rapidly differentiates you from other link building emails and hooks your target webmaster to read your email. 
3. a beginning sentence that makes your recipients feel valued and makes the statement that you did your research before reaching out to them. 
4. a phrase that indicates you know them personally and conditions them to be more receptive of your email and offer. 

So, instead of simple greeting opening lines, you take it to the next level and bring interesting facts about the recipient to personalize the opening line and make it more impactful. 

And that’s how you can go from an email opening line that reads like:

To an icebreaker that reads like:

Interesting, yeah? But how do you do it? 

Well, glad you asked.

• Watch interviews and podcasts your target audience has participated in.
• Read blog posts and thought leadership articles they wrote or contributed to.
• Read their comments and posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon.
• Read their company’s new mentions.
• Etcetera 

You then combine all of the information you collected to find unique angles and craft personalized first lines or icebreakers.

Here is an example of how we keep it all in a spreadsheet before the campaign.

Personalized offer introduction

This is where you start talking business. First thing, you can just reach out to someone and ask for them to link back to your site. That’s not the way it works. 

From our experience, a link building outreach should always go about building a relationship with your fellow marketer. Remember that the recipient is not obligated to provide a link to your website. 

Because of this, you need to make a good impression and show that you value your recipient’s time and expertise.

Personalizing your introduction can help establish that connection and make the recipient more likely to consider your request.

For example, instead of a generic line like: 

a personalized offer introduction could be something like: 

This approach shows that you have taken the time to research their website and that you understand their interests and expertise.

Clear and specific request

The goal of your email is to get a backlink, so you need to be clear and specific about what you are asking for. Instead of making a general request for a link, ask for a link to a specific page on your website. 

Specifically, you need to mention a specific post or page on their website that you found interesting or relevant to your own content. It shows that you have put thought into the request and that the link will be relevant to their audience.

Value proposition

In order for the recipient to be motivated to add a link to your website, you need to show them how it will benefit them. That’s just how it works. Ask yourself, why would they be interested in putting your link to their website? 

So, you need to explain the value of your link to motivate them to put it on their website. 

For example, you can explain how the link will help increase their referral traffic or improve their search engine rankings. 

You can also mention that linking to your website will help their audience by providing them with valuable information or resources.

Sense of urgency

Giving a sense of urgency to your request can help motivate the recipient to take action.

For example, if you have recently updated a page on your website that would be relevant to your audience, let them know that the link would be especially valuable at this time.

Clear call to action

You need to be clear about what you would like the recipient to do next, whether it be to add a link to your website or to schedule a call to discuss further. 

And while you’re at it, be sure to provide them with any necessary information or resources, such as a link to your website or a specific page. It will make it easier for them to take action.

Professional and courteous tone

Last but not least, take the time to make sure your email is well-written, free of errors, and shows appreciation for your recipient’s time and consideration. 

Maintaining a professional and courteous tone throughout the email will help you build trust and show that you value the recipient’s work and resources.

14 backlink request email templates (+ types of backlink request emails)

There are different types of emails you can create for your link building outreach campaign, depending on your goal and what resource you want linked to. 

Here are the main backlink request email templates you can use based on your needs. 

The introduction email

The introduction email is used when you want to introduce yourself or your company to the website owner and explain why a backlink would be beneficial for both parties. 

 The guest blogging/guest post email

We all know about guest blogging, and it is one of the most effective ways to reach out for a backlink.

So, here you offer to write a guest post for your target website owner’s site and request a backlink in return. That’s it. Here are your link outreach email templates for that.

The broken link email (aka broken link building)

Here, you inform the website owner of a broken link on their site, detail how it is hurting their SEO strategy and ranking on search engines, and offer a replacement link.

The best scenario for this is that you used an SEO tool to check their website, and you picked up on a broken link scheme that might be hurting their site’s performance on the SERP and suggested a broken link strategy. 

The valuable resource email

This type of backlink request email is used to offer a valuable landing page resource or piece of content that the website owner can link to.

Basically, you just created this beautiful and excellent piece of content that’s so excellent or paradigm-shifting, and you want them to link to it. 

The testimonial email

The goal here is to offer a testimonial and request a backlink from a company whose services you used and were happy with.

The resource/product list email

This type of backlink request email is used to offer your website/product as a valuable resource/solution to be included in a resource/product list on another website.

This is also a great way to market your product by pitching for industry lists and getting a backlink in return.

The skyscraper technique email

If you’ve been poking around link building outreach materials, you’ve probably seen this one. 

This strategy is used to reach out to a website owner or editor to request that they link to a piece of content that you believe is more informative or useful than the content they currently have linked to on their website. 

The premise is that they will always prefer the best material for their audience, and if your content is truly better, it’s a sure win. 

The influencer email

Here, you reach out to a well-known or respected individual in your industry to request that they share or link to your content.  

The partnership email

You can use this backlink request email strategy to reach out to another website or business to request a partnership or collaboration.

The idea is that both you and your partner can benefit from the link swap. It also establishes a good relationship between you two for the future. 

The interview email

The interview-style backlink request email allows you to reach out to an expert in your industry to request an interview for your website.

You then host the interview on your website, and they can promote it on their website using your link:

The leverage email

Finding new webmasters or marketers to reach out to all the time can quickly become hard.

You can request a backlink by leveraging an existing relationship or connection with the website owner. Here is an excellent template for that. 

The link round-up email

The idea here is to request a backlink by offering to include a website or blog post in a link round-up or list of resources. Here is the email template for this. 

The event email

This type of backlink request email helps you land a backlink by offering to promote someone else’s event or webinar on your website. You promote it there, link back to your site, and that’s it. 

You can even wait till the event is done. Then you can offer to repurpose the content for the audience that couldn’t make it or simply create a digest of the event for the audiences. 

The networking email

The idea here is to land yourself a backlink by offering to network with another website or business. 

5 tips for crafting a successful backlink request email

Let’s discuss a few tips to help you craft your backlink request emails to perfection. 

Doing your research

The idea about doing your research to make sure you understand the target website and its audience before reaching out. You want to make sure you’re not throwing random links at random sites. 

If you do it well, it ensures that your request is well-received and has the best chance of being accepted. Researching before backlink outreach should include the following:

• Identifying websites that are relevant to your industry or niche and that have a similar target audience to yours.
• Looking at the content on the website and identifying natural opportunities for a mutually beneficial link, such as content that is related to yours or that could complement yours.
• Reviewing the website’s link profile to ensure that it is reputable and has a good reputation within the industry.
• Looking at the website’s contact information and making a note of who the best person would be to contact regarding a backlink request.
• Looking at the website’s social media presence, as well as any other online presence, they have to understand more about their audience and what type of content they prefer.

Personalizing your approach

Personalize everything and tailor your message to the specific website you’re reaching out to. By personalizing your approach, you demonstrate that you have a genuine interest in working with the recipient and that you are not just sending out mass emails. 

This will also help establish a positive working relationship with the recipient. Here are a few tips on personalization. 

• Use an icebreaker to open the email, rather than using a generic greeting.
• Reference the specific content on the recipient’s website that you think would be a good fit for a link to your content instead of simply mentioning their whole site.
• Explain why you think a link between your website and the recipient’s would be beneficial, both for your website and for the recipient’s website.
• Use language and tone that is appropriate for the recipient’s industry and audience.
• Show that you have done your research and understand the recipient’s website and what they are trying to achieve.
• Show your respect and appreciation for the recipient’s work, and give credit where credit is due.

Being patient and follow up

Don’t expect immediate responses, being patient and following up should be integral aspects of your backlink request strategy.

In most cases, people will go silent on you, especially if it’s not anything urgent. So, you need to be patient and follow up with them strategically. 

It can help you demonstrate that you are easy to work with and can also help with a good relationship between you and your target. Here are a few tips for this.

• Give the recipient time to respond to your initial request. They may be busy or have other priorities that need to be addressed first.
• When you do follow up, be polite and professional. Avoid being pushy or aggressive.
• In your follow-up email, remind the recipient of your initial request and explain why a link between your websites would be beneficial.
• Provide any additional information or resources that the recipient may need in order to make a decision.
• Give the recipient the option to opt-out or decline your request gracefully, without pressure.
• Show your understanding that the recipient is busy and that you are willing to work with them on a schedule that is convenient for them.
• Keep track of your follow-ups and be mindful of not over following up, as this might come across as pushy or annoying.

Being polite

Always be polite and professional in your communication. Remember that people have no reason and are not obliged to take up on your offer. So, being respectful and mindful of their time and communicating politely need to be part of your quiver. 

Keep in mind that a polite and professional approach can lead to further opportunities for collaboration in the future. Here are a few things you can do regarding this: 

• Use a professional and respectful tone throughout the email. Avoid using language that could be considered aggressive or pushy.
• Show appreciation for the recipient’s work and the content on their website.
• Acknowledge that they are busy and may not be able to respond to your request immediately.
• Thank them for their time and consideration, even if they are not able to accept your request.
• Show that you understand their needs and that you are willing to work with them to find a mutually beneficial solution.
• Be polite and courteous in your follow-up emails as well.
• Show your willingness to help and support their website in any way you can.

Go for a relationship

Your backlink building strategy should always be a long-term strategy. Going for a relationship-based approach indicates that you are interested in working with the recipient in a mutually beneficial way and that you are not just looking for a one-time link. 

This can help establish a positive vibe between you two as well as build trust and credibility with them.

This can result into further opportunities for collaboration in the future. Here are a few tips for going for a relationship-based approach:

• Don’t make it sound like you are just there asking for a one-time link. 
• Don’t become too pushy in asking for a backlink.
• Show that you are interested in their website and the content they produce, and that you want to support them in any way you can.
• Offer to help with their website in any way you can, such as by providing useful resources, sharing their content on social media, or promoting their website to your audience.
• Show that you are willing to collaborate and work together on projects that can benefit both your websites.
• Show your understanding that they are busy and that you are willing to work with them on a schedule that is convenient for them.

Key takeaways

• Regardless of the type of email you send, always make sure that it is personalized, well-written, and clearly explain the value of the backlink to the website owner in order to generate quality backlinks. Also, these are only outreach templates, you should only use them as inspiration to craft your own emails. 
• You need to experiment with different types of backlink request emails and approaches, and to personalize your approach to maximize the chances of success.
• When it comes to outreach, keep in mind that relationships always win. So, never reach out for a one-time link swap. Always play the long-term game. 

The best digital agency for lead generation for businesses is the one that promises you leads, gets them for you, and charges you exactly for the results. 

Unfortunately, such digital agencies are hard to come by. Most companies charge you based on the work they do for you and the lead generation process they use — instead of the results they get for you — and also bind you in some 3 to 6 months contract where you pay per month without so much of a guarantee for your ROI. 

We fix that. Our digital agency, Nerdy Joe, only charges you based on the results we get for you and you won’t have to sign any contracts. 

Plus, we create cold email campaigns that are so compelling that the recipients can’t help but acknowledge our greatness before making us offers. See for yourself: 

Yeah, that’s Ross Simmons, CEO of Foundationinc.co. Here is another example from ex Hunter.io CMO, Irina Maltseva. 

Here is another example. 

We can go on. But you get the idea. 

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the 8 best lead generation marketing agencies in 2023, and we’ll start with our own lead generation service, Nerdy Joe.

Four things a lead generation company does for you

A digital lead generation agency is a company that creates and implements marketing plans to help businesses attract more qualified leads — prospects that show interest in a company’s products or services and are likely to become paying customers. 

Depending on your business needs, they can perform different functions that are essential to the growth of the business. Some of these functions include:

1 – Expand your market

When you start your business, you probably target a small group of audience. But that isn’t the only people you can target. Lead generation agencies enable you to learn about your prospects. 

Based on data-driven decisions, they conduct research on your ICPs, which can stem from various industries. This results in getting opportunities to expand into new markets. 

2 – Boost revenue

Lead generation enables you to reach out to the right prospects. Before you can do this, you have to implement various strategies such as the right messaging, content, and offer to pique interest from them. 

When done correctly, you can easily capture the attention of qualified leads and also convert them. This action has lots of revenue growth potential, which you can use to scale your business.

3 – Improve lead quality

Creating and posting generic content on the web can get you tons of traffic. But if they aren’t converting your visitors into leads, it is only a waste of time. 

A lead generation agency can implement a highly targeted approach toward content creation. Everything they will craft for your brand, whether email marketing campaigns, LinkedIn posts, or messages, will cater to a specific group. 

This makes it easy to craft messages that resonate with your audience. Subsequently, this improves the quality of your leads and boosts conversions, and drives sales.

4 – Build brand awareness

If you are a startup that recently launched in a new market, or perhaps, you already have an established business that requires more exposure, you will need to create brand awareness. This is where lead generation agencies come in. 

They can help to identify your target audience that is interested in your products or services. Then, they can create engaging content and distribute them through the most effective channel to reach them.

As time goes by, they will get your company into the eyes of people that matter the most.

8 best digital agencies for lead generation

Now that you know what lead generation agencies do, here are the eight best digital agencies you can consider for lead generation. 

1 – Nerdy Joe

Contrary to most digital marketing agencies which are Jack of all trades, Nerdy Joe only focuses on email marketing and outbound lead generation services (i.e., cold emailing)

Our team uses proven strategies to attract and engage potential customers through cold outreach strategies. We will closely work with you to understand your unique needs and tailor our services to deliver the results you’re looking for.

We believe we differentiate from most digital agencies due to our unwavering commitment to quality. In our opinion, generating leads is only half the battle; the real challenge lies in converting them to loyal customers, which is what we aim to achieve for you. 

This is why we generate leads who are both interested in your product and likely to make a purchase.

Our customized lead generation solutions are tailored to meet your specific needs because we understand your business is unique. 

Whether you’re a startup or an established business looking to expand, we have the expertise and resources to help you achieve your goals.

When you work with us, you don’t have to commit to a certain number of months, and you know exactly what you’re getting.

So if you’re tired of wasting time and money on ineffective lead generation strategies, our team of experts is here to help you take your business to the next level by generating high-quality leads that convert. 

Why Nerdy Joe is the best digital agency you need to consider

We are an ROI-focused lead generation agency: You’ll pay for the results that makes sense to you, not for the work we do

This might be a little confusing to you “you’ll pay for the results that make sense to you”. But let’s unfold the analogy we put behind this so that you actually understand what we mean by that. 

There are lots of digital agencies out there, but all of them can be classified into three categories.

1. Digital agencies that charge you for the quantity of the work they do and not for the results they bring to your table. For example, a content marketing agency will charge you for the number of content they create, and not for the number of LEADS they bring you. Or, a lead gen company will charge you for the number of emails they send, and not for the leads you get from their campaigns. 
2. Digital agencies that promise you a certain lead quality, charge you a monthly fee for it, but always come short of their promise or fail to deliver altogether. For example, a lead generation company that calls everyone who’s downloaded an ebook or PDF a LEAD and charges you for that, while the lead never buys.
3. Digital agencies that charge you based on the ROI, the number of QUALIFIED LEADS they generate for your sales team. For example, they say you’ll get 6 sales-ready leads by the end of the month, and you’ll pay $999, you sign up  for it. They do the job it takes, bring you the leads, and your sales team closes them. 

From our experience, it’s only the last type of agency that truly cares about your ROI and brings you great results. 

We believe if you are looking for a lead generation agency, your main point is that you need more leads to sell to, and that’s why you were looking for a startup marketing company in the first place. 

So, given this, our priority and main strategy aims to bring actual results that make sense for you ROI-wise. That means that our service does not revolve around the number of emails we send or the work we do (nor anything else), but rather the results we deliver.

For example, we do not report on vanity metrics like open rate, bounce rate, clickthrough rate, etc. Here are some of the metrics we rely on to makes sense of the campaigns we run for you:

• Number of positive replies
• Number of meetings booked
• Lead to close rate.

For instance, if you want to work with us to increase the customer base for your SaaS product, we’ll report:

• The number of new sign-ups you get. 
• The number of positive replies we get.
• The number of demo calls we book for you.
• And the number of new clients we get for you.

If you’re a healthcare software company selling to doctors, we’ll only charge you for the number of appointments we set for your sales teams.

We run super-targeted and successful campaigns that are aligned with your brand and makes people love you

As you’ve seen from the introduction of this article, we take creating cold emails and running campaigns seriously.

As a result of this, some of our prospects love the cold emails we send them and take the time to show some appreciation. 

Now, here is what we mean when we say “we run super-targeted and successful campaigns that are aligned with your brand and make people love you”. 

Most digital agencies and marketers go about lead generation, especially when it comes to outbound methods like cold emails, the wrong way. It mainly has to do with the fact that marketers approach it as a numbers game. 

They devise outreach campaigns and strategies like: “we’ll send 1000 cold emails per day for every week and before the weekend, we can convert 0.01 percent of them and get a few clients.” In most cases, it sounds like a solid approach and could even work. 

Here are some stuff business growth experts preach on Twitter.

And some more.

Basically, you have to send 1000 cold emails per day to get new leads. But here is why we hate it. 

That means blasting too many people with cold emails to only convert a tiny-tiny percentage. That’s ideal.

It also means that you won’t take it seriously to research your prospects to create personalized cold emails relevant and meaningful to each of them; that’s not ideal as well. 

Worst, doing outreach that way comes with many consequences for you, the client. 

• Getting flagged as a spammer: ESPs and ISPs will flag your email and IP addresses as spammers.  
• Damaging both brand and sender reputation: They’ll kill your company’s reputation, and you’ll get a bad rap on social media. 
• Poor leads quality: The quality of the leads you get will be subpar, and you can’t convert, at least not easily or in a short timeframe. 
• Pissed prospects: Some prospects can be mean to you, saying things like “Remove me from your list”, “Don’t ever email me again,” or worse, “Really? Your cold email sucks”. 
• Deliverability issues: Your domain will face severe deliverability issues, and most of your future emails, if not landing in the spam folder, will be bouncing.

Basically, doing it like this will simply make your churn rate skyrocket and damage your reputation in the same wave. 

So, we believe that’s not how you want your company to be represented and that’s why we avoid this by being super-specific in who we target and creating personalized messages, to very short prospect lists, and guess what? It works like a charm. 

We target very short prospect lists, and the most important part of our work is to spend time learning about your ideal customer profile (ICP) in and out before we send a single email. 

We want each recipient to feel like you know them and take you seriously and not just another spammer in their inbox. 

The ideal scenario we strive for is to send 20 personalized cold emails, get 15 replies, 10 positives, and get you 4 sales-qualified leads or sign-ups. For most people, this is not conceivable, and that’s because they do it the wrong way. 

Now, don’t get this wrong. By personalization, we mean we make each email relatable, meaningful to the prospect’s unique personality, and timely. We don’t just add [[First name]] and other variables to the email subject lines. 

Just for some context on how this works for us, here’s an example of a reply we received as we reached out to a VP of Marketing who has historically blocked or reported SPAM to anyone who’s sent him a cold email.

Here’s another example where we pitched a Head of Marketing, and here’s the response. 

Contrary to what most digital agencies think, we target very many people. Like 10 or 15 people, not 1000. And this gives us time to research each individual and craft completing emails.

That’s why most of the responses we get are:

• “Wow, such a nice email.”
• “Your email is well-done, partener”
• “Thank you for the nice words and compliment.”
• “Love your cold emails. Wanna write for us?”
• “Let’s catch up next Thursday.”
• “Love your email. Can you follow up on the 20th?” 

We believe the best marketing approach is the one that promotes trust and relationships. That’s why we always put in the extra work and patience it requires. 

You might wonder what we mean by researching the prospects and where we get information about each prospect or member of your target audience we use for personalization? Among many things, here are a few things we do. 

• We listen to podcasts your potential customers have been on.
• We read blog posts they wrote. 
• We read their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts.
• We read discussions on forums they’re in.

Using the data we collect, we craft first lines and icebreakers customized to each individual.

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

Here’s what he replied 1 hour later.

Here is another successful example from a similar strategy.

As you can see from both screenshots, the cold emails sent to the prospects were so compelling that they couldn’t help but acknowledge it before offering to hire us. 

Top-notch data quality and accuracy: we only run our campaigns with manually-built lists and data

You probably can tell by now that we’re very meticulous about the data we use and how we target people. 

You’ll be surprised to learn that our team manually builds all the data we use when targeting prospects for our clients.

And this includes list building, prospect research for personalization purposes, and everything else. 

We know there are data intelligence tools like LeadsEngine, ZoomInfo, or Lusha that we can sign up for, and they’ll quickly scrape up the net to build us lead lists, including 1000s of targets we can send emails to every day. 

But as well, we know the level of accuracy and customization it takes to cut it into someone’s inbox with an unsolicited cold email and get their attention. 

That’s why we do not rely on data intelligence tools. In most cases, such tools only compile technographic and demographic data from companies.

For example, using these tools, it’s easy to find data such as: 

• The company is in the healthcare industry, 
• They have 500 to 1000 employees,
• Are series B-funded companies,
• Are in India,
• Use Freshworks or Salesforce as part of their tech stack.
• Etc.

The problem is that this type of data can’t serve for quality personalization. Anyone can easily guess those, and they are not unique enough to make the prospect feel you actually researched them. You can only use it to devise poor first lines like:

So instead, we want to generate high-quality leads and data that we can use to create personalized emails and make the prospect feel like you know their day-to-day and more. So, we make use of psychographic data and other types of data.

For example, after signing a new client, we ask them about their ICP.

We ask questions like:

• Which type of client has the highest lifetime value?
• Which type of clients is easiest to close?
• Which type of clients churns the fastest?
• What are the top 3 objections you hear from prospective clients during sales calls?
• Why did you start your company? 
• What pain points were you trying to solve?
• Etc.

By getting them to answer these questions, we can pinpoint precisely who we should target and why — and it gets easy to do it manually. And this type of information makes the difference between: 

“We’re targeting series A tech companies,” 

And 

“Our ICP is a CTO at a software company selling to DevOps, and his main pain points are lack of organization, time management, and team collaboration. He often refers to XYZ podcasts to get insights as to how to manage his team efficiently.” 

Once we have a clear understanding of who the ICP is, we proceed to manually build our list, and that’s what we use to run our lead generation campaigns.

No long-term and retainer contracts: only pay to get results and renew only if you’re happy

When it comes to lead generation, we think it should be that we charge you for the leads we get you. And as displayed on our website, you choose which plan you want, you pay, and we bring you your leads — no contract, no retainer.

But what happens with most digital agencies is that they will ask you to sign a 3 to 6-month contract before you start working together. They’ll explain it by saying they’ll need to do some testing and that the purchase journey is long. 

This scheme makes you pay every month for the results you are supposed to get — even when you don’t get them.

So, you invest a lot of money, and at the end of the day, you may not have anything to show for it. That’s why our services are subscription-based. 

We promise to offer you results exactly from the first month, and you’ll have to choose whether to continue to pay and get the results or whether you want to stop working with us — depending on how satisfied you are with our service and your budget. 

We eliminate the stress that comes with long-term and binding contracts and let you decide. Here are the benefits you can enjoy from this. 

• Flexibility: A retainer contract usually requires you to commit to a fixed period of time and payment, regardless of your satisfaction with the service. In contrast, you are free to choose when to subscribe and when to stop. It’s all based on whether you are satisfied or not, which means that you won’t have to stay committed while you are not getting the results you want. 
• Risk mitigation: If you are dissatisfied with the service, you can stop the subscription without incurring financial and legal consequences. You take on less risk than with a retainer contract. 
• Accountability: The system rewards us for maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction. We know you have the option to stop your subscription if you aren’t satisfied. The opposite is true with a retainer contract since the provider is already obligated to pay for the service regardless of your satisfaction.

Pricing

Our marketing service’s pricing is crystal clear. We have three plans:

• Silver: It costs $499/month and only gives you two warm LEADS.
• Gold: This is the plan we recommend, as it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. It costs $999/month and gives you 6 hot and sales-qualified appointments or LEADS.
• Platinum: This plan is for mid-level to enterprise companies willing to fuel their sales team with up to 15 sales-ready leads on a monthly basis.

Our email marketing pricing includes the following:

• The tech stack we use to build your prospect list and send and monitor your campaign.
• A complete list of prospects that fit your buyer persona and ICP.
• The campaign setup fees.

2 – Single Grain

Single Grain is a full-service digital marketing agency that provides lead generation, content marketing, and other services to various companies and helps them to generate revenue online.

They specialize in generating qualified leads for various SaaS companies such as Bluehost, Nextiva, Drift, Axure, Streamlabs, and more.

Thanks to their innovative digital marketing strategies and modern tech tools, their digital marketing specialists find, nurture, and convert qualified leads to scale businesses. 

Their goal is to drive more site traffic, target qualified leads, convert, and ensure they become paying customers. They make data-driven decisions and constantly tweak and test them to ensure their effectiveness. 

Contrary to Nerdy Joe, Single Grain’s pricing details aren’t displayed on their website. You must contact them to get further information. 

3 – Neil Patel Digital

Neil Patel Digital is a digital marketing agency that offers digital marketing services to small and medium-sized businesses.

They are an audience-led and data-driven agency that connects brands to their customers and provides unique experiences. 

Some notable brands they have worked with include ConnectWise, Contentful, SoFi, CNN, Adobe, Western Union, LinkedIn, Nexcess, Party City, and more. They offer integrated search marketing solutions and deliver lead generation services based on three categories:

• Digital IQ – strategy and planning, data analytics and insights, persona development, dashboard development, conversion rate optimization, and more.\
• Earned Media – Search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, influencer marketing, app store optimization, organic social media, link building, and more. 
• Paid Search – Paid search, display and native, affiliate marketing, digital audio, and more.

They also offer the latest software tools that help to drive efficiencies for their team and scale businesses. Some of these tools include UberSuggest, Answer the public, ROI calculator, and Ads grader. 

Unlike Nerdy Joe which displays pricing details, Neil Patel Digital doesn’t display its pricing details on its website. You have to contact the company for their pricing information.

4 – WebFx

WebFx is also a lead generation agency that helps brands to generate qualified leads and drive sales. They also offer content marketing, email marketing, SEO, and paid ads services.

According to their website, they have generated over 7 million leads for their customers and have worked with companies such as Arrowquip, Kangol, Stanley, Sysco, Virginia Lottery, and more. 

If you choose to work with their company, you can contact them on their website. 

5 – Pearl Lemon Leads

Pearl Lemon Leads is a full-service UK lead generation service that generates qualified leads and drives revenue to grow businesses.

They have partnered with various notable companies, including TEDx, Appsumo, SemRush, Oracle, Upwork, and more.

They offer B2B lead generation services for B2B companies of all sizes to generate more qualified leads, increase brand awareness, and boost your online presence.

They implement varieties of B2B lead generation strategies to meet the needs of each client and generate revenue.

Some of these strategies include inbound marketing, content marketing, lead scoring, lead management, cold email, sales nurturing, and more. 

They also offer appointment-setting services to generate warm leads and close deals. They set up appointments with qualified prospects who have enough budget to buy from you and streamline the sales process. 

In addition, they offer outbound lead generation service — cold calling and cold emails — to generate leads for you.

Their team of email specialists writes effective emails that engage your prospects to “warm them up” and boost conversion. They also have a cold calling team that handles cold calling lead generation campaigns from scratch to produce results.

To get the pricing details of this company, you will have to book a call with them on their website.

6 – Cience

Cience is a B2B lead generation service that provides sales development and appointment-setting services for various B2B companies in over 150 industries.

They offer both outbound and inbound sales development to improve sales pipelines and generate revenue for different companies. 

Their outbound sales development service enables them to validate your ICP, target highly qualified leads through a multi-channel approach, and optimize SDR activities to generate sales opportunities. 

Meanwhile, their inbound sales development service involves validating your ICP, identifying your needs, developing well-structured messages that engage your inbound leads, and setting up a meeting for your business. 

Contrary to Nerdy Joe’s pricing plan, Cience offers a contractual plan — a minimum of 3 months — for their clients.

Although they don’t have an exact price for their websites on their services, you can use their ROI calculator to calculate and give an estimate on how much you will spend with the organization. 

7 – KlientBoost

KlientBoost is a performance marketing agency that provides various marketing services (paid advertising, search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, and more) to grow businesses.

They have worked for various agencies such as Upwork, Lytx, Juniper, Airbnb, Stanford University, and more.

One of the prominent marketing services they deliver is email marketing where they use emails to generate revenues for businesses. They research and build campaigns to bring your prospects closer to your marketing funnel. 

Whether it is crafting various types of emails to A/B testing, they manage your email marketing services through the heat ladder approach to get more opens, have a higher CTR, and generate more revenue.

They also perform email audits and ensure it performs well.

If you want to know about their pricing details, you have to use their ROI calculator to get an estimate. 

8 – Milia Marketing

Milia marketing is a digital marketing agency offering lead generation services for B2B and B2C companies.

Their goal is to give their clients a solid presence across all digital presence, build brand awareness, increase audience engagement, and drive more sales for businesses. 

They offer both long and short-term solutions, based on creative and innovative approaches to create relevant content that suits the needs of their clients.

They also use high-quality tracking tools to improve content optimization, search performance, and website conversion. 

They also work within your budget to deliver personalized services that maximize ROI. If you want to know their pricing details and work with the company, you have to schedule a 30-minute call with them. 

Why you need to outsource lead generation to a digital agency

As a business owner, you may find lead generation to be challenging and time-consuming, especially when you have a lot of tasks to handle on your desk.

In this case, you have to assess your capabilities and determine whether you should hire in–house marketers to do it for you or outsource your lead generation efforts. 

Although the struggle behind making the decision is real, there are numerous advantages you can derive when you outsource your marketing efforts.

In this section, we will explore the benefits of outsourcing your lead generation efforts to a digital agency. 

1 – Evolve with current trends and experts

The world is always evolving. If you want to be in the race and stay updated with current trends, you may have to outsource your lead generation efforts.

Outsourcing efforts enable you to stay aware of the latest technologies in the market. You also connect with experts that can use these technologies to improve and achieve your goals. 

Lead generation companies may specialize in one area. However, they are multi-facet experts who provide different services such as content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, content creation, and SEO.

Evolving with these experts allows you to improve visibility and stay updated with the changes in the marketing world.

2 – It saves time

Targeting the right audience is extremely important if you want to drive revenue. Your in-house team can spend more time researching the right audience for your company.

But by outsourcing the efforts, you can achieve such tasks within a smaller time frame through the data your outsourced team already possesses. 

Lead generation agencies only target your ideal customer profile or prospects who are interested in using your products or services.

This prevents your in-house team from wasting time on irrelevant leads that won’t yield results. 

3 – It minimizes workload and stress

When you outsource your lead generation efforts to a digital agency, you can have your in-house team concentrate on those leads and convert them into paying customers.

Not only does this process reduce workload, but it also decreases stress in the work environment. 

Less stress equals better mental health which can subsequently increase workforce productivity.

Besides, accomplishing your goals and avoiding irrelevant targets boosts their morale and improves their satisfaction. This enables them to feel motivated and more dedicated toward their following goals.  

4 – It is cost effective

If you plan to hire an in-house team to collect leads yourself, you have to pay for the visible costs — salaries, sick days, software, insurance, office electricity bills, and more.

However, outsourcing your lead generation efforts strips away some of these expenses. You can spend the saved money on other departments or other expenses that can contribute to your overall ROI.

5 – Access to the right technologies

If you want your in–house team to carry out lead generation, you must have various software and technological gadgets. However, outsourcing to an agency implies that you don’t have to worry about the tools they will use. 

They have all the tools you need to get the job done. This encourages productivity and contributes to the growth of your business.

6 – You don’t have to hire someone

Lead generation is the lifeline of many businesses. Creating a sales funnel, setting up an email, launching offers, or capturing lead assets may be some of the tactics you must implement before you can generate leads.

But the truth is that all the aforementioned factors require significant investment and expertise. 

Most times, it takes time to train someone, at least three times. In some cases, it takes a longer time for the trainee to develop the skills required to achieve success for your business. 

But outsourcing your lead generation efforts to another team doesn’t allow you to go through this process. You don’t have to waste time training someone.

Most digital agencies already have experts that will focus solely on your company. As soon as you give them the job, they jump on the board right away and bring you qualified leads.

7 – You can evaluate their results

Outsourcing your lead generation efforts means hiring a team that understands data management.

Irrespective of the service you pay for (inbound or outbound lead generation), they will present their results as a detailed report and evaluate it against your marketing goals.

This means you can see whether the campaign run by the outreach team is a success or a failure. 

You can also review the performance of their B2B campaigns and ensure there is improvement in their activities (numbers and quality of leads).

This doesn’t only help you to generate more and better-qualified leads, but also helps you to create a successful marketing strategy. 

Let Nerdy Joe generate sales qualified leads for you

There are a lot of great companies featured in this list and you can choose based on your needs. We are a digital marketing agency specializing in outbound lead generation. We use cold emails to generate sales qualified leads for companies. 

So, if you are looking for:

• An agency that uses cold email to bring your qualified leads
• An agency that charges you for results, not tasks.
• An agency that doesn’t require you to commit to a contract.
• An agency that does not waste your time and that’s affordable.
• A group of experts that care about your company’s reputation and relationship with prospects.

Nerdy Joe is the digital agency you’re looking for. 

calendar with 6 meetings with high-quality leads at only $999. Let’s fill your calendar now!

It’s almost impossible to get B2B executives to buy a SaaS or e-commerce product they didn’t know about with mere sales emails. 

Among other things, you need to: 

• Create a good first impression and get them to engage with your messages.
• Show them why your offer is relevant by highlighting the unique pain points you solve.
• Educate them on the product and how they can use it.
• Create some product experience to show them the lifestyle they can have using your product.
• Highlight the values they can expect from using your product.
• Handle their objections. 
• Show your unique advantage over competing products.
• And more.

So, as you build your product and are on the cusp of launching a marketing campaign to sell it, it can be challenging to nail all these components down into your messaging strategy.

And that’s why you need a cold email sequence.

A cold email sequence allows you to build a step-by-step cold email campaign, a messaging system that feeds your prospects with the right message at the right time throughout a well-designed sales process and eventually gets them into paying customers. 

In this article, you’ll learn how to create highly converting sales emails you can use to close your potential clients in the B2B space.

Among other things, we also incorporate cold email templates you can use as inspiration to come up with a killer cold email sequence that will generate leads and paying customers. 

Note: Struggling to get replies or book meetings with prospects that fit in your ICP? We’ll help you get 6 SQLs or book 6 meetings with prospects that are ready to buy for only $999/month. Book a 15-minute consultation now.

What Is A Cold Email Sequence? 

A cold email sequence is a series of cold emails that you program using a time interval and/or based on triggers/events and sends automatically to your prospects. 

The true power of a cold email sequence is that it works like the buyer’s journey. It involves funnel-like messaging with a nurturing email sequence that moves your prospects through stages of the buyer’s journey — from the first touch to the step you close them and turns them into customers. 

Throughout the cold email outreach process, your job is to feed your targets with the necessary information to learn about your product offer, build a relationship, and eventually get them to buy from you.

Read more: How to Generate B2b Leads With Cold Outreach [Case Study]

Why Sending Cold Email Sequences Is Important?

The whole value of sending cold email sequences revolves around the fact that sending a single cold email and calling it quits won’t get you any results. 

Statistics show that it takes a sales rep an average of 5-7 cold emails before closing a client. 

Think about cold calls. You cannot get a customer to buy from a single call. No matter what you sell or what value you provide during the call. 

Case in point, a study by The Brevet Group confirmed that 80% of sales require five follow-up calls after the meeting. The same goes for cold emailing. 

As the marketing and sales adage goes, the fortune is in the follow-up. You need to send follow-up emails after the first touch email before expecting results. 

And the best way to do this is to write a powerful follow-up email sequence. This means creating cold email campaigns with the appropriate number of follow-up emails.

There are a lot of success stories and statistics out there, but here is the main reason why this is how it needs to be. 

When cold emailing prospects for the first time, there are a couple of boxes you need to check off before they can trust and buy from you. 

Here are the main considerations. 

• They didn’t know who you are
• They didn’t know about your product
• They didn’t know about your brand
• They might not be aware of the problem you’re trying to solve
• They’re not ready to buy right away
• They don’t trust you right away
• And more and more objections

So you need a cold email sequence, a funnel to break the ice, move prospects from problem aware to solution aware, create a nurturing email sequence to convince them of the value of your offer, handle their objections, and get them to buy. 

This process is the very reason you need a follow-up email sequence to make your communications more impactful and stay on top of your prospects’ minds. 

You can provide more value as you move your prospects between stages with your email sequence, easily build a relationship with them, and eventually win them over. 

Read more: 30+ Effective Sales Email Subject Lines To Get Opens

The Anatomy Of a Great Cold Email Sequence

Here are a few traits and characteristics of an effective cold email sequence. 

It’s run on autopilot

You create your email sequence and compose it with X cold emails, follow up as many times as your cold email campaigns require, and have it all running on autopilot — without having to send them manually or one on one. 

You can also incorporate trigger-based follow-up emails in the sequence to send specific emails to prospects if they reply or want out of your mailing list. 

Keep in mind that this isn’t anything like “set it up in a cold email software and forget it” because you’ll have to monitor campaign results and move prospects to different segments based on how they reply or react to the previous emails in the sequence. 

It works like a chain

Unlike a single cold email, cold email campaigns with multi-step follow-up emails allow you to nurture your prospects and provide value and gain credibility that leads them to buy. 

As we mentioned in the intro, cold email sequences aim to provide your prospects with step-by-step information about a product or service they did not know existed.

The whole idea is that your prospects are not ready to buy right away. And so, the email sequence helps you build a stairway up to purchase — going from education to product integration. 

You get to include several email touches with different marketing materials and calls to action (CTAs) that help you move your potential customers along the process. 

The biggest value of this strategy lies in the value it provides to your prospects and the relationship you build with them. 

Using email sequences allows you to provide information that answers prospects’ questions and provides ways they can solve their pain points or grow their business. 

It fosters trust and lets you move prospects throughout your sales cycle, which ends up with them buying and you getting new customers.

This makes it a great tool for creating long-term relationships that build trust and brand loyalty. 

Read more: 650+ Power Words to Boost Your Conversion (+ Templates)

It incorporates the sales funnel and the buyer’s journey

If you know a thing or two about B2B marketing, you probably know that conversion doesn’t happen overnight. It takes multi-step strategies to get most companies and B2B executives to buy a product, and that’s true for any type of content marketing. 

Let’s take content marketing, for example. Selling a SaaS tool will require a blog content calendar that includes:

• Top of the funnel content: (Awareness stage) For example, an informational blog post about your tool and how it is the solution that solves your customer’s biggest pain point, etc. 
• Middle of the funnel content: (Consideration stage) Posts that have both informational and commercial value. Here, marketers don’t aggressively push for product integration but show your value (over the competition, for example).
• Bottom of the funnel content: (Decision stage) Posts with commercial value and aggressive marketing. Generally, a blog post is filled with social proof, pain points, solutions, etc. And more content for fulfillment and retention.  

An email sequence work (almost) the same way. So first thing, it’s not anything like sending one cold email and sending random follow-ups. 

You will need to create a structured, well-thought-out, and streamlined message sequence using the buyer’s journey and the sales funnel. 

And for this, you will need to create a certain number of emails spread over a well-defined period — usually from an initial email to a breakup email.

Think of it like a content calendar that you deploy for a specific result at the end of the quarter. 

Each email in the sequence should build up on the previous email and move your prospects one step ahead in the funnel — from awareness to decision to loyalty.

Here is an example of a well-structured cold email sequence. 

You can see how each email builds on the previous one and how they all form one sales funnel. 

That said, here are a few goals you may need to keep in mind while writing your cold email sequence to make it impactful and set yourself up for maximum results:

• Assist them in their purchase path, educate them
• Handle any objections or reservations they have along the way
• Establish authority and credibility in the industry
• Make you an expert so that you become their provider of choice when they’re ready to buy

Note: Struggling to get replies or book meetings with prospects that fit in your ICP? We’ll help you get 6 SQLs or book 6 meetings with prospects that are ready to buy for only $999/month. Book a 15-minute consultation now.

How To Create An Excellent Cold Email Sequence in 4 steps

So, how do you create a cold email sequence that’s so good that people want to read it and buy from you?

In our experience, there are three main things that you need to nail down to perfection:

• Know who you’re selling to
• Provide the right content at the right time
• Know how and when to introduce your product

If you do these right, everything else will fall into place, and you’ll be able to sell your product like never before. 

That cleared; here are specific actions you need to take to ace your cold email sequence. 

1- Build your target audience / Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

If your cold outreach strategy targets the wrong person, you might as well bang your head against a wall. Nailing down the right person to target is the first step to ensuring good results for your email campaign. 

If you target the wrong people, it doesn’t matter how compelling you make the offer and the cold email; it all goes downhill from there. So, how do you find your audience segment? 

Your target audience is the companies that will best benefit from your solution. So simply ask yourself about the needs or problems your product or solution solves. The answer will let you know who your product is important too, and that’s the very audience you should target with your cold emails.

Your competitors’ customers are also ideal for your business. These are ideally the customers of companies that sell a product or service that addresses the same pain point as yours. So you can look for companies that use your competitors’ products and target them with your cold email outreach.

Next, ask yourself about who or the companies that CAN actually adopt your product or are eligible to do so. Simply because a target has a problem you can solve doesn’t mean they CAN buy or they will be able to adopt your solution. Why? 

• Budget: The company needs your product or service. Great!! But can they pay for it? Do they have the financial means to buy your product?
• Geography: Are they geographically eligible for your product? Can they access your product? Or will the product work where they are?
• Logistics: Are they logistically eligible for your product? Can they actually use your product? Do they have the necessary talent and tools for it?

Figuring this out will help you check off-targets that will be useless to target and get you to focus on the right customer profile. 

2- Research your buyer persona

The question you need to answer here is who are you going to target at the company?

Suppose you sell a Fin-Tech piece of software specific to digital marketing agencies. Should you be sending your cold email to the CEO? The marketers at the company? Or the accountant? 

The point is to send your cold email to someone with the expertise to understand your product and, with the decision, power to further your cause. 

In this very instance, your cold outreach will best make sense to the accountant. And that’s your buyer persona. 

For every company you target with your Fin-Tech software, you should always seek people in the finance department with the decision-making power to adopt your product.

Also, in the B2B space, depending on what product you sell, the decision-making power may not be attributed to a single person but rather to a buying committee — which will propose and amend ideas before implementation. 

And so, you need to target these companies accordingly. This is also important because you’ll have to write your emails according to their personas. 

3- Create powerful icebreakers for your first touch email in the sequence

As the name implies, icebreakers are designed to help you break the ice between you and your prospects and make them more receptive to your message. Using icebreakers is all about making basic research to make your leads feel valued.

For most sales reps and marketers, the prospects or leads they will be targeting don’t know about them or their product. The same applies to you.

Creating icebreakers allows you to have a good first impression and set yourself apart. It reinforces the statement that you did your homework before reaching out to them. 

Here is how we do it at Nerdy Joe before launching our campaigns.

Check their social media

We start by checking prospects’ activities on social platforms and popular online communities. In most cases, LinkedIn and Twitter work for most B2B professionals. 

Record their activity

Next, we look at their latest activities, their company’s activity, or anything else. The idea is to find a recent interesting aspect or element from their life and spark it at the beginning of the message to smoothen the conversation. 

So, we look at things like posts, likes, comments, recent promotions, job recommendations, impressive career paths, a share, mention, a selfie, and whatever data we can talk about to create a unique first touch.

Put everything in a spreadsheet

Here is an example of how we keep it all in a spreadsheet before the campaign.

Read more: How to Write Cold Email Opening Lines That Get Replies

4- Always add a clear and simple call to action (CTA).

This is an engagement email sequence, adding a call to action should be a must. You always want your prospects to take a specific action. That’s the whole interest of reaching out to them. 

Adding a CTA should be simple and straightforward. 

• Want your prospects to buy?: Add a purchase button and urge them to click it. 
• Want your prospects to reply?: Ask them to do so.
• Want your prospects to perform a specific action?: Add a button pertaining to that action and ask them to take it.

Read more: How to End an Email: 20+ Best Ending Phrases and Ways to Sign Off

5- Factor in the Buyer’s Journey Stages

Now that you know who you’re reaching out to, it’s time to learn how to reach out to them and the best practices for doing it. 

As we mentioned earlier, you can only convert most buyers with multi-step marketing strategies, especially in the B2B area. 

They don’t know about you or your products, and when you do tell them, they will have doubts and constraints. 

That’s why you need to create a follow-up email sequence that factors in the buyer’s journey. 

Creating a cold outreach sequence with the buyer’s journey in mind allows you to take your prospects from point A, where they are not aware of your product, to point B, where they are product aware, and then to the next points until they purchase your product. 

Doing so helps you cover all the steps in an average sales cycle that are necessary for your success, and in the end, your prospects will be the most compelled to consider you. 

Let’s reiterate all the steps you have to take your prospects through. 

• They don’t know who you are, what you offer, or even your company.
• They might not be aware of the problem you’re trying to solve.
• They’re not ready to buy right away.
• They don’t trust you right away.
• And more and more objections.

With that in mind, your cold email sequence should look like a slope that mirrors the buyer’s journey. Here are the different stages of the buyers’ journey. 

Unaware – Pain – Solution – Product – Most aware

Now, here is a visual representation of an example of a cold email sequence based on the entire buyer’s journey. 

Also, depending on your target audience and product, it can be that your prospects are already deep in the buyer’s journey—in which case you’ll have to prepare your emails accordingly. Maybe they’re unaware and still facing the pain. 

Maybe they’re facing a problem and looking for a solution.

Let’s say, for example, that before you, your target prospects were using a competitor’s product or tool. In this case, your email shouldn’t include all the steps in the buyer’s journey. 

You should build a specific sequence with relevant messages starting from the solution stage. 

A good idea is to create one email that rapidly goes through all the previous stages and slides directly to the solution stage. 

You should always take the time to properly identify which stage of the buyer’s journey your target prospects are in before kicking off the campaign. 

This way, you can customize your email body to reflect each stage.

Otherwise, your campaign will be a hot mess with messages not relevant and provide no value to the readers. 

6- Make relevant offers

First of all, not all offers are great for your target audience. Your offers are only welcome when they’re relevant and appealing to the target audience. 

So first thing, you cannot make the same offer to prospects in different stages of the buyer’s journey. Since they’re not on the same journey, you should create different segments and feed them accordingly. 

This means you have to design specific emails and offers tailored to where they are on the buyer’s journey. 

For example, for prospects that are at the “Unaware” stage, your main goal is to build product knowledge. 

It makes little sense to offer anything at that stage.

But for your prospects who are already at the “Solution” stage, your goal is to create a product experience that leads to adoption. And so your 40% off offer is welcome here. 

Also, since your goal is to create a product experience, you can create another segment for prospects who are reluctant, have objections, or must go through leadership to get buy-in for product adoption, etc. 

Ideally, those prospects are already at the solution stage.

And so, for these people, it can be a great idea to offer extended free trials (7, 14 days, or one month), free coupons, etc., to get them to act on your offers and give your product a chance. 

3 cold email templates with different touches

Your cold email sequence should be composed of several emails riddled with product advantages, objections and doubt handling, soft and aggressive selling, and more.

Cold Email Campaign 1

Here is a visual representation of the cold email sequence template, along with the buyer’s journey you can use.

Now, here are cold email templates that you can include in this sequence. 

1st touch: Intro email

2nd touch: More advantages

3rd touch: Handling objection

4th touch: Adding more value

5th touch: Selling softly

6th touch: Selling aggressively

7th touch: Breaking up

Cold Email Campaign 2

1st touch: Intro email

2nd touch: More advantages

3rd touch: Handling objections

4th touch: Providing value

5th touch: Gentle reminder email

6th touch: Soft selling

7th touch: Soft sell and breakup

Cold Email Campaign 3

1st touch: Intro

2nd touch: More advantages

3rd touch: Handling objections

4th touch: Low-risk offer

5th touch: Right person, right direction

6th touch: Selling

7th touch: Breakup

It’s Time to Create Cold Outreach Sequence That Close Deals

• There is no doubt that you can get tremendous marketing results using cold email sequences. With a good cold email sequence, you can convert a prospect into a paying customer and improve the loyalty of current customers. 
• Keep in mind that your main objective is to always make your prospects want to go to the next step. Each sentence in your email body should prepare and make them more open to receiving the next message.
• The main advantage of email sequences is that once configured, they work for you. The sending is totally automated and spread over a predetermined period of time. This is the great advantage of Marketing automation.

In this article, we share with you 15 of the best guest posting services you need to consider in 2023, including our own service, Nerdy Joe. 

At Nerdy Joe, we’ve had a lot of success doing guest posting for ourselves and our clients. Here is a quick roundup of the success we had with our guest posting services. 

Here is the answer we got from CoSchedule’s Inbound Marketing Director, Ben Sailer. 

Here is the reply we got from ex-hunter.io Head of Marketing, Irina Maltseva.

We will show you in this post why we are one of the best guest posting services and how we can do it for you. You’ll also see some of the best services outside of us in the list so you can make an informed choice. 

15 best guest posting services for guaranteed placement 

As time goes on, your business will need more exposure to the public. To do this, you will need a guest posting service that can perform the task for you.

Here are 15 guest posting services you can consider for your business. 

1 – Nerdy Joe

We are primarily a lead generation agency that uses cold emails to generate sales leads for businesses to fill their pipelines and get more sales.

But in our years of experience doing cold email and trying to grow our own website, we’ve had to do guest posting outreach and found it was a service we could offer others. 

Mainly because we’ve noticed that most businesses offering guest posting services go about the wrong way and only get poor-quality links on link farms for their clients.

They generally own all the sites they get links from, so it’s easy for them to simply paste a 200-word post and put 200 links in it. 

Or, if they actually do the outreach, they will be chasing numbers — targeting too many websites instead of using the snipper approach).

They don’t take time to properly create compelling content for their customers and help them gain the authority and the trust of other site owners. And they get answers like the following:

This is what we are against. We offer our guest posting services by way of cold email outreach, also known as blogger outreach link building. 

After you sign up with us, we will have some discussions about your service and the target companies we should target; then we will proceed to build the lists, create the content, craft the cold email copy, and run the campaigns for you. 

Why Nerdy Joe is the best guest posting service for your needs

We care about your brand and offer value — we will get you quality backlinks from guest posts that make web admins, and Google love you

When it comes to guest posting services, the service you get falls into the following four categories. 

• The guest posting service like us, Nerdy Joe,  that actually takes the time to target websites based on clear criteria; creates high-quality, evergreen content that brings you quality traffic and SEO juice; crafts a compelling cold email, and actually gets your content published to earn you the backlinks. 
• The guest posting service already owns a lot of sites and easily creates a 500-word blog post to link to you and charges you for it. 
• The guest posting service makes you sign a long-term contract while promising you that you’ll get X numbers of guest posts per month while failing on the quality of posts and links and potentially failing to deliver on the number they promised as well. 
• The guest posting service is working in tandem with link farm websites, so they can easily send them a couple of dollars to get “random” content published and linked back to you. 

Suppose you were to work with a guest posting service; from the details we gave about each type above, which would you go with? 

If you said the first, then know you’re in for a treat. Because it’s only the first type that promotes quality while getting you valuable links that will help you grow and maintain growth on a long-term basis. 

The other types will only get you poor backlinks and blog posts, and that’s not how you want to be represented.

What we mean is that you probably don’t want your name attached to a 300-word post on some random site that no one will ever read. 

The worst part is that any Google algorithm update could penalize your site because of the poor sites that link to you.

That would mean that you’ve wasted your time, resources, and what you had going well on your website by working with the wrong guest posting service. 

Getting guest posting opportunities on high-quality websites is not easy and requires a lot of work. That’s why most companies look for shortcuts to scale it by getting guest posts on poor websites. 

There is no point in getting content published on low-quality websites and getting you backlinks if it’ll come back to haunt you. 

We believe if you want a guest posting service, it’s because you want your name attached to a high-quality post that colors you in your best, gets read and offers great value to the readers, and brings you quality backlinks that help you grow.

Outside of that, you’ll also have other SEO goals, such as:

• Increasing your domain authority (DA) or domain rating (DR)
• Increasing traffic to your site
• Building niche/topical authority 
• Increasing your search engine rankings 
• Etc.

That’s why our guest posting service only offers to create high-quality, fully-detailed, valuable guest blog posts for you and only publish them on high-quality websites that complement yours. 

You might wonder what type of content we create and where we publish it for you, which takes us to the next point about Nerdy Joe.

We only do the snipper approach — we are not throwing shots to see what sticks

There are primarily two approaches to reaching out to other websites for guest posting opportunities known as the sniper approach and the shotgun approach.

We only do the sniper approach, and here is why.  

The main difference between the two approaches is the level of personalization and research involved.

The shotgun approach is more of a quantity-over-quality approach, where the focus is on reaching out to as many blogs as possible — using tools to build lists and blasting them with emails.  

The downside of this approach is that the pitches are generic and can’t resonate with each individual publisher they are reaching out to.

The result can be a low response rate and a low success rate. But there is more:

• People will insult you; remember that email screenshot from above?
• It means you are lazy and selfish because you don’t care about bringing any value to the other website
• Sending that many cold emails will make you a spammer
• People will block you
• ESPs and ISPs could block your domain
• You’ll get a bad reputation and get insulted on socials
• And more.

But people do it because they imagine the more people you reach out to, the more opportunity you’ll have for guest blog placement.

That’s wrong. Now here is why we prefer the sniper approach instead so you can see what we mean. 

Contrary to the shotgun approach, the sniper approach is a quality-over-quantity approach. We focus on carefully selecting the most relevant websites and crafting personalized cold email pitches that speak directly to their interests and needs. 

Our ideal scenario is to create a list of 10 websites that makes sense for your needs, properly research the accounts to target, craft a personalized cold email with a compelling offer for each target, get six positive replies, and win 4 guest blog post opportunities for you. 

People are more likely to be receptive to pitches that are tailored to their specific interests and needs.

We understand that the approach requires more time and effort, but it leads to higher responses, more relevant placements, and higher success rates, and that’s what we stand for. 

Mind you; we don’t target websites simply because they are quality or align with yours. We do it all based on your goals and needs with the guest posting campaign.

Here are some scenario-based examples to explain what we mean:

• If you want to increase traffic to your website, we will ensure that we host your guest post on a website that has massive traffic — on top checking for quality, relevance, and authority. 
• If you want to increase your domain authority and improve your search engine rankings, we will get guest post opportunities from websites with massive traffic and domain authority.
• If you want to build niche authority, you can get backlinks from other websites in your niche (not your competitors) with a bigger domain authority than you do. 

We research your target websites and come up with guest posts content ideas that make people love you

This section is where we answer the question about the type of content we create for you for the guest posting campaign. 

We’ve learned from our experience that when you pitch people with regular, generic blog post ideas for guest posting, you have very little chance of success.

Because, after all, why would they want to host generic content that anyone could easily whip up from a guess on their site?

We get that. So, here is how we approach it. 

We start by researching their website and thoroughly understanding the type of content they publish and how they write it.

We want to ensure that whatever content we bring to their table is aligned with their philosophy, target audience, overall business and marketing goals, etc. 

Also, offering basic, what is, 500-word guest post ideas won’t cut it. That will sound like we are simply reaching out to whip up something that gets us a backlink without offering any real value in return. The content idea we pitch needs to be “dope”. 

We offer evergreen case studies.

This is one of our go-to strategies at Nerdy Joe. When it comes to guest posting outreach, one of our most successful approaches is to offer to create a case study for the target website.

They are the easiest way to convince someone to accept guest posts on their website. 

I mean, who doesn’t want to have a solid teardown of a company’s success case or marketing strategy on its website? It always works like a charm. 

Here are a few we’ve published over the years. 

On CoSchedule.

On RevGenius.

On Encharge.io

On The Good.

There are more. The main point of these examples is to show you that creating case studies and pitching them for guest blogs works, really. 

We offer guides.

Step-by-step guides also work really well for pitching guest post ideas. The target website’s audience will learn something specific, and they can genuinely benefit from the content. The key is to make them actionable and show expertise.

Here are a few examples that we did.

On Hunter.io.

On Vidico.

That’s it. Note that the type of content we create will depend on the plan you want us to work on and our agreed-upon deal. 

We build list and reach prospects to personalize our cold emails: we do everything manually to ensure data quality

Strong personalization is non-negotiable if you want to have success with a guest blog outreach strategy. 

To do it well, from building our target lists to the information we collect and use for personalizing our cold emails, we build all the data manually. 

We build our lists manually

You might wonder why we prefer doing it all by hand while we could simply use a data intelligence tool like ZoomInfo or LeadsEngine to easily build a list and collect all the data we want. 

Well, we do know the value of those, we’ve tried using them in the past, and that’s why we now prefer doing all the research manually and building all the data manually. 

In fact, these tools only aggregate surface-level data that are not really relevant to the type of data we need to properly personalize our emails. 

With these tools, it is easy to find data about a company, such as:

• They are in the healthcare industry, 
• Have 1000 to 1500 employees,
• Are series A-funded companies,
• Are in the U.S,
• Use HubSpot or Salesforce as part of their tech stack.
• Etc.

Well, that’s not the type of data we want. Remember that our email will be sent to a specific account at the target blog or company. So, this type of data can’t serve in any way. It’s relevant. 

Instead, we take it upon ourselves to find the right account to reach out to at each company. In most cases, this generally falls into the following heads at the company:

• Head of Content
• Content Lead
• Content Marketing Officer
• Content Marketing Manager
• Head of Content Marketing
• Content Marketing Specialist 
• SEOs

You might say that another tool like Clearbit can help us find these. Well, using these types of tools, it’s easy to find the leadership of a company. Positions like the Founder, CEO, CTO, President, VPs, and Head of departments. 

It’s hard, near impossible, to find the people that “actually get their hands on the blog” at those companies, like the Head of Content or Content Lead.

And even if they do make suggestions, they might not be accurate; they may be outdated, they could be the wrong title, etc. 

We avoid all this by actually researching the company’s blog, team page, and LinkedIn profile to see the people actually working there and doing stuff RIGHT NOW.

That’s how we ensure accuracy in account research. You can learn more about how we build our lists here. 

As we mentioned earlier, we don’t build long lists. So, here is what our list generally looks like before launching our guest blogging outreach campaign. 

We research each account manually to collect about them to personalize our cold emails

As we build the lists, we also research the people we will be sending the emails to so we can have topical data about them to make our cold emails compelling and our offers unique. 

For starters, we don’t want to send cold emails to webmasters with unique generic, templatized messages like:

“Hello John, 

I hope this email finds you well. 

I’m Jack from Cold Email Sucks. 

I found that your blog speaks about Email Marketing. 

I have an idea for a post about cold emails…bla bla bla. 

I’d like to place it on your website. Please let me know what you think. 

Cheers. 

Jack from Cold Email Sucks.”

This is the easiest way to lose the guest post opportunity. So, we do prospect research to actually understand who they are and collect unique data about them that makes them love you from reading the first few lines of the cold emails we send them under your name. 

Specifically, that’s how we go from the email above to something like the following.

“Hey, Marc

I was listening to your podcast with Xavier, and I have to admit that the take you had on marketing and sales alignment is pretty interesting. 

Nobody ever talks about how marketers have very little knowledge of the target audience’s actual needs and only make decisions based on guesses. More people need to hear this.

Also, I was playing around with your website and noticed that your content mainly covers email marketing services. 

I have an idea for a case study about a cold email campaign we run that I think your audience will love. I took the liberty to create a map of the content here {link}”.

That’s not the entire email, but you get the idea. 

The data we collect allows us to connect with them on a personal level. Immediately, we strike the difference in their inbox, and they know we did the homework before reaching out. 

They know you are not some random person blasting them with poor cold emails (because we send the cold email from your address).

Doing it like this promises value from the email, and people will be much more likely and happy to host your content on their site. 

Now, you might be wondering if we actually do the research. 

• We listen to podcasts your potential customers have been on.
• We read blog posts they wrote. 
• We read their LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon posts.
• We read discussions on forums they’re in.
• Etcetera.

Using the data we collect, we craft first lines and icebreakers customized to each individual.

Here’s what it looks like in real life. We pitched CoSchedule’s Head of Content, Ben Sailer, and asked him if we could write for them.

[DatoCMS Block #75995416]

Here are some examples of how this works for us.

Here is another positive response we’ve gotten from Hunter.io’s ex Head of Content, Irian Maltseva. 

As you can see, both loved the email and the content idea. That’s the result of targeting a short list of prospects, researching quality data, and perfectly personalizing your cold emails. 

We will make you sign no contract, no retainer: you’ll know exactly what you get

Our guest posting services are pretty clear. You’ll let us know the number of backlinks or guest posts content you want to be published per month, we’ll unfold the workflow to get it done, you’ll pay us accordingly, and that’s it. 

We won’t make you sign any contract, and we will only report on data that matters to you.

For example, at the end of the campaign, we will tell you how many positive responses we had and let you know how many guest post opportunities we got you. 

We won’t make you sign any contracts and quarter-long retainers, which are common in the B2B service space.

Most companies will ask you to sign a 3 to 6-month contract before you start working together. They’ll explain it by saying they’ll need to do some testing and all. 

Working with us means you get your post posted from the first month. We believe if you order blog post creation on other sites, it’s simply because you want a blog published under your name on quality websites, so that’s what we achieve for you, and you pay for it. 

Also, our service is subscription-based, and you’ll only renew if you’re happy with what we do for you. If you’re unhappy, you can easily unsubscribe; there won’t be any binding contracts.

This mitigates any risks associated with contracts and gives you the flexibility to choose when to subscribe and when to stop.

2 – LinksThatRank

Links That Ranks are a link-building agency that offers guest posting services and delivers quality links to their customers. Their goal is to deliver quality links after it has passed through a strict internal quality control process.

Such processes include ensuring the placement contains internal links, external links, high-quality content, images, and technical checks. 

They also operate a strict blacklist policy where they blacklist sites such as guest post farms on PBNs, resellers lists, guest post networks, publicly advertised links, or hacked lists from SAPE.

They update these lists every month to ensure their clients get high-quality links. 

Once you sign up for this agency, they ensure that you get relevant placements, including  1000+ words of content, and publish on sites that Google trusts and have 500+ organic visitors per month.

They also avoid “write for us” pages because they believe they are heavily farmed and pose huge risks to your website. 

Here is a quick view of how their process works for their clients.

• You place your order where you provide their target URLs and keywords.
• They manually review your order to avoid mixing up URLs or keywords.
• They add your URLs and target keywords to their internal rank-tracking system.
• They search for relevant sites within your industry and start negotiating link placements.
• After negotiation, they create well-written 1000 words content that includes relevant internal and external links.
• Each link goes through its 23-point quality control review.
• They send a final report with your links and anchor texts and fulfill your expectations.

Links That Rank’s pricing details aren’t displayed on their website, but you can contact them to request a quote or further information.

3 – GetMeLinks

GetMeLinks is a link-building agency that offers guest posting and other link-building-related services for various companies over the years.

With over 4 years of experience, they have been featured in publications such as Business Insider, SEO Tribunal, Search Engine Watch, Fat Rank, and more. 

GetMeLinks offers its guest posting services to get super relevant backlinks on its client’s website through unique outreach campaigns.

Based on their client’s request, they have a custom outreach campaign where they deliver guest posts based on the metrics you have on your website within 4 weeks. Such metrics often depend on the DA or DR traffic requirements of your website. 

In the case where the guest posts have very little URL authority, the agency manipulates this through the tiered links to the guest posts. In other words, they have PBNs link, which they use to increase the power to your site without causing any risk.

Based on their client’s preferences, GetMeLinks offers their guest posting in three ways which are:

Niche Posts

Here, the client chooses the type of domain rating on which they want their guest posts published. Common types offered by the agency include DR 30+, DR 45+, and DR 60+, and they cost $160, $260, and $340, respectively.

Gambling guest posts

Since gambling is a niche that few placement websites accept, the agency finds it more tedious to get a target placement. Due to this, the service costs more than the regular guest posts. 

There is a custom price for each domain rating on which clients want their guest posts published. For instance, a DR 30+ gambling guest post costs $220. Meanwhile, a DR 45+  gambling post costs $320. 

UK Backlinks

Since the Uk is a financial powerhouse where millions of individuals have access to the Internet, there is a lot of competition for many online businesses.

As a result, Get Me Links provides a specific UK link-building service to give your business a competitive advantage. 

Prices vary based on the domain rating on which you want your guest posts published. DR 30+ costs $200, DR 45+ costs $300, and DR 60+ costs $400. 

4 – Loganix

Loganix is a marketing agency that offers various digital marketing services to different companies. Some companies they have worked with include Rankings, OneLocal, Drift, From the Future, FreshBooks, Optimise, and more. 

One of the digital marketing services they offer is guest posting services. They help their clients to get links through a tough process that comprises prospecting, content creation, quality control, placement, and reporting. 

This rigorous process enables the clients to get links from trusted sites, a 1-month turnaround, relevant and well-written articles, and guaranteed placements. 

Here is a quick view of how their process works.

• You place your order by sharing the anchor texts and desired URLs you would like to place in each post.
• They send you a list of websites that fit your criteria and have their writers create content that fits your needs and the site’s guidelines.
• Once their team ensures that the link is naturally placed within the content, they send a white-label report with links to the guest posts you have purchased. 

Loganix offers two pricing plans for their guest posting services, and these include:

• Guest Posts Basic, which costs $200 and gets you 100+ visits.
• Guest Posts Premium, which costs $300 and gets you 500+ visits.

5 – OutreachZ

OutreachZ is a link-building agency that delivers authority backlinks for startups, digital agencies, and brands all across the globe. They have served over a thousand clients in 11 countries.

Some of the notable companies they have worked with include MOZ, HubSpot, HuffPost, Search Engine Land, Entrepreneur, and more. 

One of the major services they offer is guest posting services, where they deliver authority backlinks with confidence.

On their website is a prominent feature called “The Marketplace” where you can find publishers within your niche and personal network.

You can filter these publishers based on metrics such as organic traffic, niche, domain authority, and more.

Here is a quick view of how their process works.

• They find the right publishers and begin an outreach campaign.
• They present the publishers to the clients and seek approval.
• Once approved, they give the publishers different topics and write an interesting article that contains a backlink to your website.

The result of the process includes getting guest posts on thousands of high-quality websites. They also give out a 12-month guarantee for all your links; else, you get a free replacement. 

Outreach’s pricing plan varies based on different metrics, and this includes:

• DA 30+ plan, which costs $80 and gets you 1,000+ organic traffic.
• DA 40+ plan, which costs $115 and gets you 5,000+ organic traffic.
• DA 50+ plan, which costs $173 and gets you 10,000+ organic traffic.

6 – FatJoe

FatJoe is a link-building agency that provides various link-building services to agencies in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Unlike other agencies, they refer to their guest posting service as “Blogger Outreach.”

This blogger outreach service involves reaching out to blog owners with offers of writing free content or collaborating with them in exchange for links and mentions to their client’s websites.

The written content is relevant to their target audience and also relates to the client’s business.

Here is how the agency’s process works.

• Upon signing up with the company, the clients must provide the anchor text and target URLs while the team decides on the content length and placement. Then, they reach out to relevant bloggers within the business industry.
• Their copywriting team produces well-written content that includes a non-promotional backlink to your site. 
• You get a report of the blogger outreach they have secured and the domain authority metrics from your dashboard.

After going through this process, they provide unique and well-written content with high domain authority quality metrics. Fat Joe offers a 5-tier pricing plan for their services, and this includes:

• DA 10+ plan,  which costs £60 per placement
• DA 20+ plan, which costs £80 per placement
• DA 30+ plan, which costs £100 per placement
• DA 40+ plan, which costs £180 per placement
• DA 50+ plan, which costs £320 per placement.

7 – The Hoth

The Hoth is primarily an SEO-based agency that provides SEO services to grow businesses.

Although its primary focus is on SEO, PPC, and content services, it also provides a link outreach service that produces website authority and organic traffic services. They do this by getting high-quality backlinks from ranking sites within 30 days. 

Here is a quick view of their process.

• You provide the target URLs and anchor text.
• Then, you will give them some time (a maximum of 30 days) to get the final report on your HOTH dashboard
• If you have any questions about which links or anchor text to choose from, you will contact the agency.

Here is their four-tier pricing package based on a 500-words article and the type of Domain Authority you want.

• DA 20+ package costs $150 per post
• DA 30+ package costs $200 per post
• DA 40+ package costs $275 per post
• DA 50+ package costs $325 per post.

8 – Outreach Solutions (Outreach Labs)

Outreach Labs is a UK-based SEO outreach and link-building agency that offers content creation, SEO blogger outreach, and link-building services to small, medium, or startup businesses, freelancers, bloggers, and other relevant agencies. 

Their SEO blogger outreach service involves the creation of great content and then contacting some high-quality websites to pitch the content to them and get the domain authority you have selected. 

Here is a quick view of the agencies’ process with their clients.

• You reach out to them with your requirements
• They examine your website and current backlink profile
• They suggest a package based on your website’s current situation
• You place your order
• They get started on the blogger outreach and link-building service to get the links delivered to you within the agreed time.

There are no pricing details about their services on their website, but you can fill out their forms to get in touch with them.

9 – OneLittleWeb

One Little Web is an SEO-based agency that provides SEO and content services for leading agencies, SEO Pros, and business owners. They claimed to have worked with companies such as Niche Pursuits, Eric Ramos, Repair Smith, SEO Bank, JeffLenney, and more. 

The agency offers guest-post backlink services where they perform outreach campaigns by crafting 1000+ content filled with powerful backlinks to get traffic from real blogs.

They hand-pick the backlinks and do not select from link farms, PBNs, or any site that can pose a risk to your site. 

Here is how their process works.

• You select your desired plan from the order page and provide them with the target anchor text and URL.
• They perform manual prospecting and secure your placement with relevant sites.
• You approve the proposed domains, and they begin the process.
• Their expert writers and editors craft relevant content for your guest post backlinks.
• They publish the guest post with a link back to your targeted URL
• They track the progress of the project and provide a final report when they finish. 

One Little Web offers its pricing plans in two categories — monthly plans and DA Guest-Posts. Here is their DA Guest-Posts pricing plan.

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• DA 30+, which costs $139 per placement 
• DA 40+, which costs $199 per placement
• DA 50+, which costs $349 per placement.

The monthly plan is as follows:

• Startup plan, which costs $999 per month and gets you 6 guest post backlinks
• Growth plan, which costs $1999 per month and gets you 11 guest post backlinks
• Scale plan, which costs $3999 per month and gets you 24 guest post backlinks.

 10 – The Adsy

Adsy offers guest posting services for buyers and publishers. They deliver quality blog posts with backlinks from sites to gain traffic.

To do this, they perform anti-fraud control and regular content checks in order to get quality backlinks from sites.  

Here is a quick view of their processes.

• You find publishers through a search in the inventory or open offers.
• They order your blog post to be written and placed
• They receive your blog post on a publisher’s platform
• They profit from premium backlinks on sites with real traffic.

After going through the process, they get you top-quality DA 40+ backlinks that can bring organic and referral traffic to your site. The increase in traffic from other sites will be up to 80% and build brand awareness. 

There are no pricing details about their guest posting service on their website, but you can fill out their forms to get in touch with them. 

11 – Niche Website Builders

Niche Website Builders is a content publisher marketing agency that helps investors and individuals to build profitable content sites.

They are featured in WP Eagle, AuthorityHacker, Craig Campbell, Empire Flippers, Flippa, Niche Pursuits, and so on. 

They provide guest post services for various industries, including crypto, medical, and gambling sites. To begin with them, you must provide the target anchor text and URLs. 

Then, they craft well-written content (750, 1250, or 1750 words) and include links in the most natural way using your anchor text.

The chosen links undergo a strict vetting process which is assessed through 17 proprietary metrics. These checks are carried out by their quality control team, which guarantees you quality and safety.

Niche Website Builders offer a three pricing plan for their guest posting services, and this includes:

• DR 30+, which costs you $150 per placement,
• DR 45+, which costs you $240 per placement,
• DR 60+, which costs you $310 per placement.

12 – Uplers

Uplers is an Indian hiring platform that helps remote companies to hire talents efficiently. They have worked with global brands such as DHL, Disney, Amazon, Meta, National Geographic, Oracle, JXT, and more.

Although they are primarily a hiring platform, they also offer guest posting services to grow businesses. They craft well-researched and unique articles that include your website link and publish on the targeted sites. 

They ensure that the targeted sites have metrics such as high domain authority, high organic traffic, traffic location, indexed pages, and more.

They go through a process that gets you 100 unique links within 30 days. If you don’t like the links, they replace them.

Here is how their process works.

• You place an order and provide them with a URL and anchor text.
• Their native content writers craft a unique copy and publish it on the blog with links back to your site.
• Once the content is published, they will send you a guest post progress in the form of a white-label report.

Their pricing plan varies according to the domain authority you want and whether you want them to craft content for you.

For instance, a DA 20+ plan without content costs you $50, but the same plan with content costs you $75. The image below shows you a vivid illustration of their pricing package.

13 – OutreachMaMa

Outreach Mama is an SEO agency that drives organic traffic to grow businesses.

They offer guest posting, blogger outreach, and link-building services to improve their clients’ search engine ranking and build brand awareness.

They have worked for over 300 companies, such as Forbes, Craft Whack, Entrepreneur, Perfect Dog Breeds, Mighty Deals, Backlinko, Vital Reaction, and more. 

Their guest posting services involve handling content creation, outreach, and placement services. Here is how their process works.

• They will collaborate with you to select the best content on your website for guest post links. If you don’t have one, they will create it for you.
• They will go through their inventory and reach out to industry blogs to discover and secure guest posts on their blogs. 
• Once they have agreed on blog posts, they will put together content ideas that fall within the publisher’s guidelines.
• Their content writers create content that is consistent with guest post requirements. 
• Once the content is published, they inform you by sending monthly guest post reports.

They offer three guest post pricing packages, and these include:

• 5 links which cost $1,100 per month
• 10 links which cost $2,100 per month
• 15 links which cost $3,000 per month.

14 – Smash Digital

Smash Digital is an SEO agency that helps to scale organic traffic and earn backlinks for businesses. They provide SEO and link-building services for agencies and businesses through proven strategies to increase rankings and traffic.

Once the website is ready, their goal is to build high-quality backlinks that would get their first-page rankings. 

They partner with thousands of website owners, editors, and marketers to get their clients’ content featured on their relevant sites. All you have to do is to submit your URLs and the keywords you aim for.

Then, you leave the rest of the process — initial contact, content creation, and publishing — to them. If you want to know about their pricing and other details, you can contact them.

15 – PrestigeLinks

Prestige Links is an SEO agency that provides link-building services for startups, agencies, and businesses.

They have worked with over 100+ companies, including StudyGate, Binance, Spot, Hvseo, Pantheon, Preply, Airwallex, and more. 

Their blogger outreach service involves performing 100% manual outreach so that clients can get links to real websites and gain real traffic.

In other words, they do not deal with BPNs, fake sites, BS, or any site that gets them low traffic.

Here is how their link-building process works.

• You choose the sites you want, along with link URLs and anchor text.
• Their team writes articles and reaches out to get them published.
• The articles are published and then linked back to your brand. 

Prestige Links offers three pricing packages for their link-building service. This includes:

• DA 40+, which costs $180 per placement
• DA 60+, which costs $280 per placement
• DA 80+, which costs $380 per placement.

Why you need to outsource your guest posting services 

As a business owner, you may have lots of digital marketing campaigns and other activities you need to deal with. 

For instance, you could be busy figuring out how to generate B2B leads or perform outbound lead generation.

If your focus is fixated on this, you could find it a bit challenging to build an effective guest post campaign that is relevant to your target website and audience. 

Fortunately, you can outsource the guest-post campaign to an agency that specializes in the service. This removes the burden of having your team do everything and could allow you to focus on other activities. 

If you are still unsure about guest posting services, here are some reasons why you should outsource your guest post campaigns. 

1 – You team up with professionals.

Outsourcing your guest post campaigns allows you to team up with professional writers who have experience in blog writing. Since most professional writers stay updated with the latest trends in the industry, they are conscious of the type of information that can attract your audience and the ones that won’t. 

Not only will they understand the objective of your content, but they will apply their experiences to create content that delivers. Besides, you get exposed to sheer talent that delivers quality work to you. For instance, a guest post service that specializes in B2B lead generation can produce an engaging article on how to generate B2B leads. 

2 – It saves time.

Although you can make money, it is impossible to have more time. To create more time, you have to prioritize what is more important to you and clear your schedules.

Rather than spending time creating content or looking for sites that would accept them, you should channel your energy and time to other important business activities. 

Allow a reliable guest blogging service team to handle the job. Since they already have a creative writer’s team and have a good network with target websites, allow them to do the job.

They can handle your requirements with ease because it is their specialty. 

For instance, if you need an article about saas email marketing strategy, you can hire a guest posting service that will not only craft engaging content for the audience but also for the target website. 

Also, you can have your project delivered within a specific timeframe. Most guest post services have more than one client.

In other words, they have many projects to complete and deadlines to meet. Hiring them means you get your project done in less time than when an in-house team handles it. 

3 – It saves money.

Hiring an in-house team means you have to pay salaries. In-house writers often cost a lot. A source revealed that labor cost accounts for 70% of the total business costs.

You have to pay for employees’ wages, benefits, payroll, and other related taxes. Hence, adding more labor increases the cost of running the business.

However, outsourcing your guest posts saves you from these unnecessary costs and other hassles.

By investing in a guest posting service, you get the most talented and productive team that will deliver quality work to you. You can also spend the saved finance on other aspects of your business that need money. 

4 – SEO and technical knowledge.

The goal of guest posting is to gain traffic. You can’t do this without knowing about SEO and other technical aspects. This is where the guest posting service appears in the picture. 

They do not simply craft content but craft SEO-imbued content that ranks faster. They possess the SEO and technical knowledge which you can use to increase your traffic and grow your business. 

5 – Get relevant content. 

If you feel that your guest post won’t align with your brand tone when you outsource it, you are wrong. Think about the time you hired a web designer to design your business logo.

You gave them all the specifications — font, color, style – relating to the logo. The same principle applies to the guest blogging service team.

You can specify the vision of what you want in your content. It helps the writers to stay on course. They understand your vision and would create connections not only to your audience but to the target website. 

The more you use a particular guest post service, the more they become familiar with your brand tone. For instance, a guest post agency that specializes in digital marketing can craft engaging content about email marketing campaigns.

How to choose the best guest posting service 

Guest posting service is an effective way to build brand awareness and grow your business. Although you may find the task challenging, you can outsource to a guest posting service that can do it for you. And if you outsource it, how do you choose the best guest posting service for your business?

1 – Service

Before you settle for a particular company, you have to research the service they offer. This includes researching the kind of websites and blogs they offer their services. Is it related to your niche or industry? 

Working with a guest posting service that specializes in your niche or industry gives you access to guidance and recommendations on the type of websites you should target for guest posts. 

They can also help you to craft high-quality content that will be relevant to the target website as well as an audience. However, if you select a company that is too generic with its services, it could affect the expected result. 

Also, you should take a look at the quality and relevance of the website they work with. Look out for their domain authority and reputation as well.

The more authority the target website has, the better your guest post will perform. Choosing a service that offers access to high-quality websites that are relevant to your target audience and industry. 

2 – Prices and Packages

Pricing is a crucial factor when you are considering a guest post service. Although this shouldn’t be the sole focus, your business must have a budget, and you should align it with what the business offers you. 

It is best advised to search for a guest posting service that offers different pricing packages. You can find this on various companies’ websites. Some can offer you bulk discounts too.

This allows you to know what you are getting once you pay them. If you don’t see a price list, this may be a red flag. You may be shocked at their prices later on. Hence, look for a transparent company. 

Also, you should avoid guest post companies that charge too low. Sometimes, the cheapest service isn’t the best. What you should look out for instead are companies that offer competitive rates for their services. 

3 – An in-house content team

One of the main goals of guest posting is to drive traffic to your website. You must make sure that content is high-quality and relevant to the audience of the target website. One way to make this happen is to look for a guest post service that has an in-house content team.

This means that the company has a team that is committed to researching and writing quality content that is relevant to your business and resonates with the audience on the target website.

An experienced team creates engaging content that is free of grammatical errors and knows how to include links naturally. 

4 – Social proofs

As a client, social proofs remain a significant factor you should check out before you select a particular company. Know what their previous customers are saying about them or their experiences. 

Ask for testimonials. Most reputable companies would have it available for you to read. This is the evidence that demonstrates they receive good feedback from clients and can prompt you to work with them. If the company can’t provide you with social proof, then you don’t have to work with them. 

5 – Quality control and blacklist policy 

When choosing a guest posting service, ensure that they have quality control measures in place. This enables them to review and approve your articles effectively before they are published.

In other words, they ensure that the article is free of grammatical and spelling errors, contains well-naturally placed links (internal or external), has a relevant image, and is free from technical errors. 

Besides, you should ensure that the guest posting service operates a blacklist policy on specific websites that could pose great risks to your sites when linked to them.

Such websites include guest post farms, PBNs, or any other site that could pose a significant risk when linked to your website. 

6 – Results

The main importance of guest posting is to produce results. In other words, you must see a significant increase in your website traffic.

This can help to boost your conversion rates. Due to this, you have to ensure that they give you a report when your guest posts are live. 

They must also provide you with the details of the progress, especially the organic traffic. Hence, when you are choosing a guest post service, ensure that they give you a detailed report of what is going on. 

Let Nerdy Joe do your guest posting services for you

At Nerdy Joe, we have perfectioned the best blogger outreach styles and tactics to reach out to influential CMOs, and content team leads to get backlinks from the world’s leading websites. 

If you need guest blogging services, here is what we can help you with:

• Finding target websites to get quality backlinks from.
• Target account research and list building.
• Coming up with the best pitch ideas and ideating them.
• Craft the outreach campaign emails and get your results. 
• Get your content posted on niche-relevant sites and get contextual links.

Ready to ace your guest posting campaign? Talk to us.

AppSumo made $37 million this year from its email marketing strategy.

ConvertKit has grown from 0 to 8 figures by leveraging four SaaS email marketing strategies.

What do these brands have in common? They all have a great email marketing strategy.

The fact is that nothing beats a good email marketing strategy. At least, for an ROI of $42 per email sent, that’s the best we can say.  

So, if you are struggling to come up with an effective email marketing strategy, this article is for you.

Let’s start with the basics.

10 Email Marketing Tips You Can Use to Boost Your Campaign Results

Now that you know the basics of email marketing, here are some email marketing tips that’ll help you give a boost to your current email strategy.

1 – Set your goals

Taking the time to set your goals is a key part of your email marketing campaigns.

Setting up goals can help you determine what type of email marketing campaigns you send, how and who you target, what content you include, and your performance indicators. 

So what do you want to achieve with your campaign?

Is it to drive new sign-ups for mailing list development? New sales prospects? Higher attendance at your event?

If you want your campaign to be successful, it’s worth spending some time thinking about what you want to achieve with it before you launch. 

Also, be sure to set measurable goals, such as specific numbers, dates, etc., of your objectives, so you can measure your success.

Here’s an example.

❌ Wrong: Boost email open and clickthrough rates

✅ Good: Increase email open rate by 25%

You should also be aware of vanity metrics. 

These are the kinds of metrics that make you appear strong in the eyes of your competitors but don’t serve you well in understanding your performance. (i.e., Email CTR = 20% when revenue is actually $15 )

So slow down the process, sit down, and get your goals perfectly defined so you can better achieve them.

2 – Build your email subscribers’ persona or avatar

The key to creating an ideal persona is simply to get to know your target audience and to keep looking for them.

• Who is interested in your products/services?
• What keeps them up at night?
• How can you help them?
• What interests them?
• How do they relate to your brand?

These are just a few of the questions you’ll need to answer in order to create a solid subscriber profile.

In fact, your emails are only as good as the engagement of your readership. So if your emails don’t attract them, you’ll only get crickets, and your unsubscribe rate will increase.

Designing your subscriber persona will help you paint a big picture of your target audience.

You’ll be able to understand the different issues they face, which will allow you to serve them better. This is the key to writing emails that your subscribers will love.

3 – Design your email marketing strategies

Your strategy is the starting point for your email campaign.

An effective strategy helps you achieve your marketing goals with maximum consistency and structure.

Yet you don’t have to go through thick and thin to create an effective one. 

Here is how to design your email marketing strategy.

Define your audience

A study conducted by MailChimp shows that 43% of consumers unsubscribe from a company’s email marketing if the messages are not relevant.

You need to identify and get to know your target audience. The target audience is the person or group of people identified as the ideal recipients of your campaign emails. 

These are the people you want to appeal to your product or service through your marketing initiatives. Understanding who they are will help you unfurl your tactics accordingly.

Signup sources

Signup sources are where and how your subscribers sign up for your list. A successful campaign requires a variety of subscription sources.

Knowing where your customers have signed up for your list can give you a better idea of how to engage with them and where you might focus your marketing energies in the future. 

So, if you notice that the majority of your sign-ups are driven by lead magnets or option forms, you may want to focus on creating more lead magnets.

But if your subscribers are coming from some other newsletters, you may want to sponsor more newsletters.

Establish your sending frequency

There are many ways to define your email-sending frequency.

Your main goal now should be to find a healthy balance between your email-sending frequency and your subscribers’ preferences.

You may decide to send daily updates to keep your subscribers constantly informed, or you may decide to send only twice a month to keep subscribers excited about your emails.

The general rule is to send your emails at least once a month to keep your subscribers engaged.

However, you don’t have to stick to this, it depends on your strategy and the preferences of your target audience.

Some tools, such as Klaviyo and Mailchimp, allow you to find out the best average time to click and respond to emails. So you can check this and commit to it. 

Make a schedule

The idea of scheduling your campaign amounts to creating a content calendar to schedule the flow of your campaigns.

This is especially meaningful if you need to work with a team to manage the email marketing campaign or if you have a busy job.

How you schedule your email marketing will be determined by your industry, the types of content you send, and how often you choose to send it.

For instance, in D2C, people like to purchase towards the end of the day. But in B2B, people mostly open their emails early in the morning and around 2 PM.

4 – Write Emails Your Subscribers Will Love

Writing emails is not rocket science, so you have to be flexible in how you go about it. You can choose to be fun and relatable or serious and boring.

But, how do you come up with a killer email copy?

The short answer is: By keeping your readers in mind. And for the longer answer, keep reading.

Let subscribers decide what they want to read right off the bat

Letting your subscribers decide what type of content they wish to receive from the start is the best way to set the grounds for meeting their expectations.

Remember. Your subscribers signed up for your email list because of a specific need or a specific pain.

Here is how TechCrunch does it.

By letting your audience choose the type of content they want, you can easily feed them the right content, address their pain points, and win their hearts.

Plus, it will save you a lot of trouble down the road.

Also, letting them guide you will help you easily segment your list accordingly.

Here is how SEMrush does it.

Use segmentation to send the right message at the right time

If you’re following this rationale, segmentation starts the minute you let your subscribers decide on the type of content they want to receive.

Now, you need to make your content more relevant and meaningful by dividing your subscribers into specific groups based on their common traits, interests, and needs.

You will also need to consider the pillars of audience segmentation, as suggested by EmailMonday to send the right content at the right time.

If you’re starting with your email list segmentation, the first three pillars will get you off and running.

But if you’re somewhat advanced in your email marketing strategy, then the last pillar, behavioral segmentation or your subscriber’s digital body language, should be where you stand.

This is basically what is otherwise known as considering their stage in your buyer’s journey.

Personalize your emails to make them more appealing

Now that you have your email lists into segments of people who share common traits, it’s time to drive it all home by focusing each email content on its recipient.

Segmentation makes your emails relevant to your subscribers, but good personalization makes them significant to them.

Personalizing emails will help you improve relevancy, and you will be able to stick out from the competition.

Also, guess what? It will enhance your email campaign metrics, such as the open rate, the click-through rate and cut your churn rate.

Include interactive elements

In an email, interactive elements are worth a thousand words.

People are naturally curious, and interactive elements allow the readers to better engage with your emails by allowing them to tap, swipe, click or simply watch.

Using interactive elements gives your subscribers a better experience with your emails and makes your emails more appealing and more memorable for your readers.

More importantly, interactive features boost the performance of your emails.

For instance, a video in an email can increase your email click-through rate by up to 300% and reduce your unsubscribe rate by 75%.

And they guarantee a 96% higher click-through rate over emails without videos. 

But video is not the only interactive element that works. Images, gifs, emoticons, etc., are also part of interactive elements that work.

Drive it home

Here are a few tweaks to make your emails perfect and appealing to your subscribers.

Using these tips, you will be able to design emails that trigger response, boost your email marketing metrics and crush the competition.

• Leverage branding

The goal here is to define the main communication channel with your readers and to stick to it. This strategy is important for one main reason: consistency.

Consistency fosters authenticity and trust with your readers at a core level.

You need to leverage branding at every stage of the sales journey. Customers will interact with different people in your company.

You will need to be consistent in your branding for each person they interact with.

For example, if you use a corporate tone or signature format, make sure your entire team uses the same corporate tone and end your emails the same way. Same goes for how you start your emails.

This keeps the brand identity consistent across the board, and regardless of who is sending the emails to the customer it aligns with your brand and resonates with the readers.

• Highlight the value to the customer

Ask yourself a simple question. Ask yourself what would make you care if you were the one reading the email.

The response to that question will help you write emails with your readers in mind and prevent you from writing for your own confirmation. 

• What’s in it for them?
• How does your email benefit them?
• Will they learn?
• How will your offering make their life easier?
• What will they gain out of your product or service at the end of the day?

People don’t care about your business or your products, let alone your emails. You need to highlight the value to the customer to drive engagement.

• Send your emails at the right time

Should I define a timeframe for sending my emails? I’m so glad you asked.

Yes.

You might be swayed to run your campaign as soon as you get your emails nice and ready.

But don’t send it right away. You need to send your emails at the right time to get optimal engagement.

Why?

The time you send your email is as important as the overall engagement rate of your e-mail marketing.

This may not sound like much, but people won’t read business emails after business hours, and they won’t read promotional emails when they’re focused on their daily work.

Get the gist?

You need people to eye up as soon as you’re in their inbox, which is why you need to set a prime time to send your emails.

An excellent way to do this is to audit your campaign analytics and deduce the best time to send your emails.

Analyze which day of the week and time of day people are most interested in your emails and figure out a prime time to send them accordingly.

5 – Personalize your messages

Sending personalized email campaigns is vital to make your emails appealing to your subscribers and making you stand out.

As we mentioned before, personalization goes beyond just adding your recipient’s name to the email.

It’s about writing content they can relate to, painting a picture they will recognize themselves in.

And to do that, you need to know your target audience, right down to their daily lives. 

When you can do this, the recipient feels that you have sent a message just for them, and they will engage more with the content of your email.

And as a result, you will see your open and click rates improve.

6 – Use email software to increase efficiency

After writing and styling the interactive elements, you will need comprehensive email marketing software to facilitate your campaigns.

You can automate the tedious work of creating emails for each recipient, and you can send thousands of emails in the blink of an eye.

Email marketing automation is also a great way to quickly 2x, 3x, or even 10x your email marketing ROI.

With your email marketing software, you’ll be able to distribute to segments easily and reach out to all subscribers on a personal level.

In addition, you will be able to mold your emails and trigger them based on user behavior so that you send the right email to the right person at the right time.

Software options include HubSpot, MailChimp, Active Campaign, or Constant Contact.

They will provide you with comprehensive email marketing features to design, organize, customize, and track performance metrics for your email campaign without requiring any technical or graphic design experience.

7 – A/B test your emails

As you designed your campaign and got the emails all spruced up, don’t just send it yet. Test it first. 

AB testing allows you to see if the design is relevant if the campaign will proceed as planned if it is going to be a big hit or a flop.

You can also test the different elements of your campaigns to see how they will impact your subscribers’ reactions.

Here are a few ways to test your emails.

• Test in different email clients.
• Test with and without images.
• Try the plain text version versus the HTML version.
• Get a second pair of eyes on your campaign before you send it.
• Evaluate how the different changes affect recipients’ behavior or engagement.
• Find the best version and send it.

8 – Send both educational and promotional emails

Your primary goal in email marketing is to promote a product or service. But that doesn’t mean that all of your emails have to be sales-y.

If you only send promotional emails, you will see your churn rate increase. Similarly, if you only send educational emails, you won’t make any money.

That leaves you with one option. Balancing educational and promotional emails.  

The goal of email marketing is to establish a long-term relationship with your subscribers, and that’s what educational emails are for.

Secondly, your promotional emails will help you keep your business afloat.

Overall, you will be able to help your subscribers solve their problems while still running your business perfectly.

9 – Design mobile-friendly emails

Data from Campaign Monitor present the following figures:

• 47% of all people across demographics use a mobile application for checking their email, while a meager 26.9% still prefer a desktop.
• 81% of recipients prefer to open emails on their smartphones. On top of that, 21% of recipients open their emails on their tablets.

This simply translates to the fact that mobile-friendly design has the highest open rate and performs the best thereof.

And as such, mobile-friendly email design is no longer an option. You need to ensure that all your email marketing copy renders well on mobile devices.

This will directly see your campaign performance skyrocket.

10 – Write punchy and witty subject lines

A subject line is one of the first things — besides the preview text — your recipients see when you shoot them an email.

So, it’s crucial to ensure your subject lines entice recipients to click and open your email.

Here’s how to write subject lines that get replies.

Use questions in your subject lines

Questions in a subject line are a great way to stir people’s curiosity. Email marketers use questions to push their readers to imagine and wonder what is in the email for them.

e.g. Quick question, [[First_name]]

e.g. Is this you, [[First_name]]?

Use power words in your subject lines

Power words are words you can use to trigger some emotions within your recipients. You can use a power word to trigger fear, joy, excitement, urgency, or even sadness.

Using one in your subject lines helps emphasize your desired outcome and urges the recipient to take the desired action.

• e.g. Ends soon [[2hrs left]]
• e.g. [[Revealed]] My secret to high conversions

Use emojis in your subject lines 🎯

Emojis make your recipients even more curious about the content of your email.

It makes them wonder what’s inside, but it also makes them think of your email as an informal conversation — which removes the initial friction your recipients might have.

What are the basics of an email marketing strategy?

An email marketing strategy is a set of tactics used to achieve desired business objectives through email marketing campaigns.

Successful email marketing campaigns start with understanding the basics: knowing your business in and out and setting clear objectives.

Know your business

First thing first, you need to know the nitty-gritty of your product and industry.

As a brand, you will know your aha moment when you correlate the quality of your product, industry trends, your business model, and your audience’s behavior.

Because that’s when you have enough data to combine to build a killer strategy.

AppSumo, for example, is a company that sells software online; it’s an Appstore for software, if you will.

Their target is small business owners, and this very target audience is susceptible to the price of the products they buy.

So, AppSumo constantly sends them emails with discounts, lifetime deals, and even freebies.

They make more than 49% of their revenues leveraging email marketing as a result of this strategy.

But the same strategy cannot be adopted for Ahrefs. Ahrefs is an SEO software company.

A better strategy for Ahrefs would be to feed prospects with relevant information to create demand and then offer their software as a solution.

Set clearly defined email marketing goals

No work is in vain unless it is done without a clear goal in mind. Setting goals helps you determine if you are on the right track.

Here are some questions you will need to answer in order to set a great email marketing goal.

What content should you include in your email?

Your emails, from the sender name to the email subject lines to the call to action to the email sign-off, need to align with your goals.

Your targeting must be on-point, and the audience should resonate with the email content.

For example, suppose you wish to convert free users into paying customers.

In that case, you should send them onboarding emails, customer success stories, social proofs, and whatever collateral is needed to make them buy.

Also, bear in mind that your prospects will be spread across different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Therefore, the same email content would not be appropriate for everyone. So, craft your content accordingly and mind your segment audience.

What type of email marketing campaign do you want to run?

For each type of campaign you run, you need to set a target to hit.

For instance, if you are running a Black Friday campaign, your objective could be to make $3 million worth of upsells.

On the other hand, if you want new leads from a list you got from Zoominfo, you need to run a cold email campaign.

This means that your email marketing campaigns should be a mix of different types of emails, such as lead nurturing emails, welcome emails, newsletters, dedicated emails, transactional emails, and autoresponders – all of which have a specific purpose.

What would be a good win for you after your campaign?

What would be a good win for you after implementing a 6-month email marketing strategy? How would you define your success?

Setting up key performance indicators will help you better track your email sends, and you’ll be able to see how your efforts compare to those of your competitors and even your previous campaigns.

Some of the most common metrics include deliverability rate, open rates, bounce rate, click through rates, click-to-open rate, unsubscribe rate, inactive subscribers, and many more.

But these metrics will only tell you about each of your email marketing campaigns separately. Not on the overall email strategy.

So to make it more straightforward, tracking these metrics will not allow you to evaluate the success of your overall email marketing strategy but only the success of each email campaign.

See the nuance?

You need to look at the big picture and track much more relevant metrics, such as revenue, interest rate, or response rate.

These are the metrics that really tell you about the results of your overall email marketing efforts.

Read more: 15 Email Templates to Inspire Your Email Campaigns

Key Takeaways

• Email marketing is highly effective and can help you drive success for your business. Your goal, however, is not to sell hard. You just have to keep nurturing your leads and keep them happy with your communications.
• Most people are not ready to buy, and that’s why many sales emails fail. Your goal is to keep feeding your audience with valuable content and build a solid relationship so the day they want to buy, you are top of their mind.
• All it takes is to understand your business, know your audience, set clear goals, and build great emails they’ll love.

Appointment-setting services cost vary based on a lot of factors. Every appointment-setting company has its own set of rules and considerations it uses to come up with its pricing model. 

In our experience, we’ve found that most appointment-setting services, especially with their pricing model, fall into one of four categories:

• Some services charge you for the complexity of the work or workflow it requires but not for the number of meetings they book for you. This can be frustrating because it’s the meetings that matter most to your business.
• Other agencies may promise you incredible results but fail to deliver on those promises. This can leave you disappointed and wondering if you wasted your time and money.
• Some services require you to sign long-term retainer agreements, even if you’re unsatisfied with their results. This can be a big financial burden, especially if you’re not seeing the results you were promised.
• Then there are agencies like us, Nerdy Joe, who only charge you a flat fee for the number of meetings we book for you. We present you with a proven, surefire process for generating leads and booking meetings. We’ll book the meetings, and you’ll only pay us for that.

We believe that our approach is the fairest and most transparent way to do business. You’ll never have to worry about paying for anything other than the results you’re looking for. But we’re not jumping to conclusions. 

In this article, you’ll learn everything about appointment-setting services cost. You’ll find the average amount of dollars companies pay to lend themselves appointment setters. 

We’ll also compare the different pricing models we see in the industry from the top companies. 

By the end, you’ll know how much you should pay for appointment-setting services and why.  

How much do appointment-setting services cost?

What are the different appointment-setting service price models?

Keep in mind that the pricing model can vary depending on various factors, such as the service provided, the level of expertise, the number of appointments, and more. 

Here are some standard appointment-setting service price models:

1 – Flat rate/pay-per-performance

In this pricing model, the appointment-setting service charges a fixed rate for a predetermined number of appointments. You know precisely what you get; you pay for it and get it. 

For example, we charge you $999 for six appointment bookings with sales-qualified leads. This pricing model is typically best suited for businesses with a fixed budget and a specific number of appointments they need.

2 – Hourly rate

In this model, you pay an hourly rate for the time they spend setting up appointments. For example, a service provider might charge $50 per hour for an appointment setting. 

3 – Commission-based

Here, the service charges a commission based on the number of appointments they set up, typically a percentage of the sale resulting from the appointment. 

For example, a service provider might charge 10% of the sale that results from the appointment they set up. 

4 – Pay-per-appointment

This means you pay based on the number of appointments the service provider sets up for you. For example, they might charge you $50 per appointment they set up. 

5 – Subscription model

This can sometimes include a contract, and you pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee for ongoing appointment setting services. It can be a good model if your business needs regular appointment-setting services.

6 – Project-based model

Here, the service charges you a flat rate for a specific project or campaign, regardless of the number of appointments set up. 

For example, they might charge you $2,000 for setting up appointments for a product launch. This is a great model if you have short-term appointment-setting needs.

What’s the average appointment setting cost?

There are no fixed figures for the cost of appointment setting services. It depends on many factors, and every lead generation agency suggests a pricing model and range based on what they believe will offer them and their clients the best value. 

That being said, we’ve been through websites and pricing pages of over 50 of the most notorious services in appointment setting, and here are some rough estimates of the average appointment setting cost:

• Flat rate: The flat rate can go from $500 to $5,000 for a set number of appointments.
• Pay-per-appointment: This can cost you anywhere from $20 to $200, depending on the complexity of the service and the industry.
• Hourly rate: For the hourly rate, you can pay from $15 to $100 per hour, depending on the level of expertise and workflow required for the appointment setting service.
• Commission-based: The commission rate can range from 1% to 30% of the sale that results from the appointment.

How Do Appointment Setting Companies Compare?

Here is how appointment setting services compare when it comes to pricing. 

Nerdy Joe

Pricing: Flat rate/Pay-per-performance model

With us, you know exactly what you get. You pay us; we get it for you. 

We understand that the main reason you’re seeking an appointment setting service is to get more appointments or sales meetings with sales-qualified leads and ultimately turn those prospects into customers. 

The drive for this goal can either be that you’re not growing at the rate you wish and are therefore looking to a service to help you expand or are simply looking to grow your business. 

At our agency, we pride ourselves on our unique approach to appointment setting. 

Unlike other services (as seen in the introduction) that charge you for the campaign or the workflow they perform, we only charge you for the number of meetings we book. 

We’re not interested in vanity metrics like email opens and clicks, the number of hours it takes to book the meetings, or how much you’ll make from it — we’re focused on delivering tangible results that matter to your business, and that’s only what you need to pay for.

Here’s what you can expect when you work with us:

• We have a proven, surefire process for generating leads and booking meetings that we’ll share with you.
• Our lead generation specialists use cold email to reach prospects and book meetings for you.
• We will work tirelessly to bring actual meetings to your table.
• We use a unique process where we manually research prospects, build lists manually, and personalize every single cold email we send — we don’t send out generic emails to a massive list. 
• We won’t lock you into a long-term retainer agreement – you only pay for the meetings we book for you, and you’ll get results from the first month.
• We won’t bother you with metrics that don’t matter – we’ll only report on the metrics important to your business, like the number of meetings booked, positive replies, and interested prospects.

Callbox

Pricing model: Subscription-based

Callbox leaves no pricing information to be found on their website. You can only reach out to them and get customized pricing. 

But a review article on the Martal Group’ website indicates that a few Callbox clients paid anywhere from $4,300 – $5,300 a month, with some larger projects costing as much as $15,000 monthly.

It still doesn’t answer the question of how many leads people get. But this pricing clearly comes as a steep price for most businesses on a tight budget.

Also, there is no guarantee that all appointments they get for you will turn into sales.

CIENCE

Pricing model: Subscription with six months minimum retainer

Cience’s outbound outsourced SDR team service is where you get appointment setting services. Although they don’t display the exact dollars hiring this team will cost you, we see the pricing type and everything it entails. 

To work with Cience, you must commit to a 6-month minimum of the price you agree on. Although this can be great for your company, it does not offer any guarantee, and you’ll have to pay them (for six months at least) regardless of the results they get you.

So whether or not you’re satisfied with their work, the agreement still binds you to pay them for six months.

This type of contract gives them time to try and test things, but it doesn’t really guarantee an ROI for you. It also means that you won’t be able to scale down, should you need to.  

Belkins

Pricing model: Pay-per-appointment

Belkins don’t display fixed pricing on their website, as well. Instead, they’d rather discuss with their customer to devise customized pricing to suit their needs and budget.

Though we could easily see that they have a pay-per-appointment pricing model, and according to The Cost Guys, they charge anywhere between $400 to $600 per appointment. 

That’s literally between $4000 and $6000 for every ten appointments they book for you. Keep in mind that it can happen that the leads they get for you don’t convert. We believe that pricing is way too expensive and not sustainable for the average business on a budget.  

Martal Group

Pricing model: Project-based

Martal Group’s website does not provide pricing information, and the FAQs section does not address this topic either. Pricing cannot be found anywhere else, so you will need to book a consultation. 

Though, a review post on Cience’s website reads that Martal Group’s pricing policy states that the minimum project cost is $5,000. This is also expensive and can’t be a choice for a new startup or a small business looking to grow. 

Pearl Lemon Leads

Pricing model: Hourly rate

Pearl Lemon doesn’t even have a pricing page on its website. But we could pull data from a review post on the Cience website. The minimum project size is $1,000, and an approximate hourly rate for Pearl Lemon Leads’ services is between $50 and $99.

The issue with hourly pricing is that you’re getting charged for the workflow, and from our experience, there is no standardized way to get leads all the time. You’ll fail, try, fail, and it could take days and weeks to see results. 

This pricing, although looks reasonable and quickly becomes expensive for the business. 

Lead Cookie

Pricing model: Hourly rate

Lead Cookie doesn’t disclose its pricing on its website. However, we read on Cience’s review post that Lead Cookie’s hourly rate ranges between $25 and $49. 

Moreover, Lead Cookie’s website advertises that if its services do not help you meet your goals, you will get a 30-day money-back guarantee.

3 Questions to Ask Before Hiring An Appointment Setting Service Provider

When hiring an appointment setting service provider, there are a few key things you should keep in mind to ensure you’re making the right choice for your business. 

Here are three questions you need to ask an appointment setting service before hiring them:

1 – What is their approach and process for generating and booking appointments?

You should prioritize understanding the appointment setting service’s approach and process for generating leads and setting appointments. You’re basically hiring a team that’ll do outreach on your behalf. 

Most people do it the wrong way and spam people with poor strategies. 

You need to ensure that they represent your brand very well and take the time to understand the audience, do the proper research and reach out to people with meaningful, personalized messages and not internet-scattered message templates. 

You need to ensure that they use a proven, results-driven method and can demonstrate how their process has worked for other businesses in your industry or with similar sales goals. 

You need to be sure that they’re using an approach that’s suitable to you and your business. For example, do they use cold email, LinkedIn outreach, or a combination of both?

2 – What’s their pricing model, and how does it guarantee ROI for you?

Make sure you understand the service’s pricing model before signing on. 

Some providers charge based on the number of appointments set, while others charge a flat fee for a certain number of hours worked. Ask questions to know what you are getting into and how it’ll benefit you. 

For example, are they charging a flat fee per hour? What if they spend 90 hours working on your project and only generate one lead? Is that OK with you? Is it a good investment for your business? 

Be sure to ask about any additional fees or charges and any minimum commitments or contracts. Also, research and calculate how sustainable their service is for your business, especially if you plan on working with them for an extended period.

3 – How do they measure success and report progress? 

So, how do they measure success? What’s success for them? A booked meeting? A positive reply? A click? You need to be sure that you’re on the same page as them regarding the final results they’ll report on. 

Next, communication is key when working with an appointment setting service provider. 

You want to ensure they’re keeping you informed every step and that you are personally a part of every idea they test and vet every cold email/message they send — from the initial outreach to the final appointment. 

Again, we can’t speak for all the appointment setting service providers. Still, we believe the right is the one that provides regular reports on their progress and is willing to adjust their strategy as needed to improve results. 

They should have a well-streamlined platform with message boards and dashboards where you discuss ideas and keep everything.

For this, our team uses Basecamp. We onboard you, explain how the platform works and everything you need to know, then move on to working together. 

Failing this, consider how easy it is to communicate with them, whether it’s via phone, email, or another method.

What Do Appointment Setting Services Do?

Appointment-setting services are designed to help you connect with potential customers and set up meetings or appointments with them. 

Our team at Nerdy Joe set out to be an appointment setter agency because we see that small businesses starting and large businesses looking to scale their sales activities struggle to establish a proven process for active lead generation and customer acquisition. 

Also, sales reps spend a lot of time prospecting, researching, and reaching out to prospects. That’s not the best use of their time.

We do that work for your sales team, freeing up time for sales teams to focus on what they do best: face-to-face selling and closing deals.

So, like any other appointment setting agency, our goal is to generate more leads and sales for you or your sales team by scheduling face-to-face meetings, phone calls, or virtual appointments with interested prospects.

The appointment setting agencies typically use a combination of strategies to achieve this goal. They may use cold email outreach (like we do), LinkedIn outreach, cold calling, social media outreach, or targeted advertising to identify potential customers and connect with them. 

Once a potential customer expresses interest, the appointment setting service will work to schedule a meeting or appointment with them.

You can then take it from there and close the lead, turning them into a paying customer and growing your business. 

Why do you need an appointment setting service provider?

One of the main benefits of using an appointment setting service is that it allows you to focus on what you do best — running your business.

Here are the main reasons you may benefit from working with an appointment setting service provider. 

Saving time

Especially if you’re new to it, appointment setting can be a time-consuming process. Think about all the prospecting work, list building, message crafting, account research, etc., work you must do. 

If you are a small business or a startup looking to grow, you’re probably already swamped managing other aspects of your operations. 

By outsourcing appointment setting to a service provider, you can free up time and focus on other business areas.

Improved lead quality and more sales

We can’t speak for all the appointment setting services out there, but we at Nerdy Joe target and generate high-quality leads that convert. 

We use advanced data mining and prospect research techniques that help create super-personalized cold emails that resonate with your target audience and generate higher conversion rates and more sales for you. You can learn more here. 

Accessing business expertise

Appointment setting service providers often have a team of experienced professionals who specialize in lead generation and appointment setting. 

By working with these experts, you can benefit from their knowledge and experience and access to advanced technology and tools.

Cost-effectiveness

Outsourcing appointment setting to a service provider can be a cost-effective solution, particularly if you’re a small or medium-sized enterprise. 

By paying a flat fee for appointment setting services, you can avoid the costs associated with hiring and training in-house staff.

Finding the go-to-market process — so you can scale

Another reason you may benefit from working with an appointment setting service provider is that you will find the go-to process for generating leads and booking appointments. 

For example, when you sign up with us, our experts try black and white to find the proven methods for generating leads and setting appointments for you. 

This can help you identify the most effective strategies for your specific industry, target audience, and sales goals — resulting in a higher conversion rate and more sales over time. 

Plus, experts can provide valuable insights and feedback on the effectiveness of different lead generation strategies, helping you continuously improve your sales process.

What Should You Look for in Appointment Setting Services?

Here are some key factors you need to keep in mind to ensure you hire the right people for your appointment setting needs.

• Experience: Look for appointment setting services with a track record of success in your industry or niche. For example, if you run a DevOpp company, you may want to find appointment setters with experience in that industry.
• Marketing philosophy: Do they use aggressive sales tactics that could damage your brand reputation or turn off potential customers? Or do they take a more consultative approach, seeking to understand your customers’ needs and provide value? Finding an agency that aligns with your brand values and marketing goals is important.
• Quality leads: They should be able to provide you with high-quality leads that are likely to convert into customers. Ensure they use a targeted approach to finding leads rather than just mass emailing or cold calling.
• Marketing ethics and standards: Ensure the service follows ethical practices in lead generation, such as obtaining consent and respecting opt-outs. They should also comply with industry regulations such as GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and TCPA. 
• Communication: Good communication is essential for a successful partnership. Ensure the appointment setters are responsive and able to communicate effectively with you and your team via a reliable channel.
• Reporting: Will they be able to provide you with regular reports on the progress of your campaign, including the number of appointments set, leads generated, and conversion rates?
• Pricing: What’s the cost of the service in relation to the value it provides? Don’t be afraid to shop around and compare prices from different providers to find the best deal.
• Guarantees: Look for appointment setting services that offer guarantees, such as a certain number of appointments or leads within a specific timeframe, and money-back guarantees.

Hire Nerdy Joe for your appointment setting service needs

For most of the appointment setting services, you can’t even determine whether the services suit your budget or business needs. But, with us, we let you know what you’re getting from the beginning. 

You’ve probably had all the data you need to compare all the services we listed in this post. 

If what you’re looking for is:

• An agency that charges you for results, not tasks.
• An agency that doesn’t require you to commit to a contract.
• An agency that does not waste your time and that’s affordable.
• A group of experts that care about your company’s reputation and relationship with prospects.

Nerdy Joe is the appointment-setting service you’re looking for. We will help you generate and have meetings with qualified leads so you can convert them with minimum effort.  

Blogger outreach link building doesn’t have to suck. Outreach can be done at scale without feeling spammy.

About a year ago, when we launched our B2B lead generation agency, we wanted to grow through inbound marketing. So, we worked on a few blog posts on our website, and part of the strategy was to get backlinks from some established, high authority sites in the marketing industry. 

So, we decided to run a blogger outreach campaign to acquire backlinks from some of the most popular websites and the most influential marketers already established in the industry. Basically, we targeted websites RevGenuis, Hunter.io, CoSchedule, Ahrefs, etc.

Here is a quick rundown of the answers we got from the people or marketers we targeted. 

The answer we got from CoSchedule’s Inbound Marketing Director, Ben Sailer.

Here is the reply we got from ex-hunter.io Head of Marketing, Irina Maltseva.

Here is what we got from Ahrefs’ Head of Content, Joshua Hardwick. 

We got some more. But, you get the idea, we did well. Very well, indeed.

In this article, we will show you the exact same process we used for our successful blogger outreach campaign and how you can emulate it. But first, let’s get the fundamentals out of the way. 

What exactly is blogger outreach link building?

The idea of blogger outreach link building is to get backlinks from other sites that are more authoritative and have topical relevance to yours by sending them outreach emails. 

Basically, this involves developing a strategy to convince them to link to your site. This could be pitching them a guest post idea, asking them to remove broken links and update them with yours, Brian Dean’s skyscraper strategy, link swaps, etc. 

The next step is to write a beautiful cold email with a compelling offer and pitch them your idea. You write the outreach email in such a way that they see how you can mutually benefit from linking and lay in value and tactics to compel them to take your desired action. 

To be successful, the blogger outreach campaign must be a win-win for you and your target. 

For example, you get a link on their website, which can lead to more exposure for your brand and more SEO benefits, such as increased domain authority, better rankings, more traffic, and more business overall.

In turn, the site hosting your link publishes a new and fresh solution or content on their site that their audience will benefit from or enjoy in some way. So, more experience for their audience and SEO benefits for them. 

Why do most companies, teams, or outreach specialists suck at blogger outreach?

Most web admins or site managers hate blogger outreach. And they hate random link-building emails even more. That’s because most people’s blogger outreach link-building approaches lack genuine, well-planned targeting and just SUCK. 

Most people’s blogger outreach strategy is to send tons of templated cold emails to strangers whose email addresses they’ve scraped from a data intelligence tool. 

From what they offer the other site to their way of doing it, everything sucks — basically — and in most cases, they get answers like this. 

Image source

Of course, it comes as no surprise because they come across as spammers. 

There are two blogger outreach strategies or approaches that marketers use. The approach you use determines how everything plays out and the results you get. Let’s discuss each approach. 

The two link building outreach approaches are the sniper and shotgun approaches. Let’s start with the shotgun approach. 

The shotgun approach 

The shotgun approach is a mass outreach strategy where you send a large volume of generic, impersonal, cold emails to a broad range of bloggers. 

Proponents of this approach believe it is easier and less time-consuming than the sniper approach — which is why most people tend to embrace it. 

What they actually do is sacrifice quality in the name of scalability, and the approach typically results in a lower response rate, deliverability issues, and lower-quality backlinks. 

This mainly has to do with the fact that the cold emails are templates sent to too many people and can’t be personalized to make an impact. 

First, you are sending a cold email. Your targets didn’t know who you were whatsoever. You have that playing against you already. Plus, the fact that your email is generic and brings nothing special kills any chance you had. It also says a lot about the person that sends them. 

• You’re selfish.
• You’re lazy.
• You don’t give a damn about them or their business. 

Here is an example of a blogger outreach cold email we received. 

That’s a shotgun approach. We can easily see that the email is designed to be quickly sent to thousands of people without too much editing, and it just reads terribly. 

Also, that link building outreach will — for sure — result in poor outcomes because before someone accepts your link to their website, they need to know that you:

• Studied who their target audience is and what they love to read. 
• Studied the type of content they create and share on their blog and social media profiles.
• Took the time to determine that they (or their website) are relevant to your niche.
• Bringing something of value, such as a guest post, a discount code for their readers, or any other incentive to their table.
• Wrote a personalized email explaining why you are reaching out and what you hope to achieve through the collaboration.
• Are not just reaching out to get a link and call it quits.
• Etc. 

The key to succeeding in a blogger outreach campaign is to prove to the target web admins that you are a genuine, serious marketer bringing exciting benefits to their site.

But how do you do that? The snipper approach. 

The snipper approach

As the name implies, the sniper approach is a targeted, personalized outreach strategy where you carefully research and select specific blogs or websites to reach out to. 

With this approach, you craft personalized, well-researched cold emails tailored to each website owner’s needs and interests. 

The aim is to establish long-term relationships with high-quality bloggers in your niche. It takes time to research and requires a well-thought-out strategy to succeed, which is why most people find it challenging and would rather shoot at every site they find (you know, Shotgun).

But here is the kicker: If you were to send 800 cold emails to convert one prospect or 30 well-crafted and personalized cold emails to still convert one, what would you do? 

Don’t lose sight of the facts that while you send 800 cold, generic emails, you will get reported for spam, damage the sender’s reputation, and most of your emails will go unanswered and unread. 

So, which is it?

Well, we will choose the “30 well-crafted emails” deal every day because it’s worth it. That’s the approach we use and advocate at Nerdy Joe. That’s how you get answers like these: 

5 steps to get backlinks with a well-crafted blogger outreach campaign

First thing you need to know is that our link building strategy is guest posting, and we use the snipper approach — that’s how we know blogger outreach works.

Here are five steps you need to follow to create and run a successful blogger outreach link building campaign.  

Step 1: Find your target websites 

The first step in your outreach strategy is finding the websites you want to target for link building. For this, you must have some criteria about the websites you get the links from. Let’s detail this.

Have criteria about who you want to get links from. 

First thing you need to know about blogger outreach link building is that you cannot target everyone. The idea of acquiring backlinks from other sites is that you want the other sites to help promote your own in some way. 

Ideally, you will want to:

• Increase your domain authority (DA) or domain rating (DR)
• Increase traffic to your site
• Build niche/topical authority 
• Increase your search engine rankings 
• Etc.

And so, based on your goals, you cannot reach out to every site that’s available to you to get links from. Getting backlinks from a website with less SEO value than your own will not benefit you.

• If you want to increase traffic to your website, you will want to host your guest post on a website with massive traffic. 
• If you want to increase your domain authority and improve your search engine rankings, you will want to get backlinks from websites with massive traffic and domain authority.
• If you want to build niche authority, you can get backlinks from other websites in your niche (not your competitors) with a bigger domain authority than you do. 

Keep in mind that whatever site you target with your blogger outreach strategy needs to have a topical relevance with your own, and you somehow need to be addressing the same target audience. 

For example, Hunter.io sells a tool that helps people get the email address of their target leads so that they can reach out to them via email. Our company offers outbound lead generation services plus email marketing. 

That means that our company can find value in having our content hosted on Hunter’s blog since the reader might be interested, and they can hire us to do lead generation for them. 

Also, from a Google standpoint, it makes us a good match since we both talk about lead generation and email marketing on our respective blogs. 

Build a list of your target websites in a spreadsheet

If you set your goals and have all your criteria sorted out, there will be only a handful of blogs or websites you will be happy to get backlinks from.

Here is how to find those websites — with both topical and audience relevance criteria in mind. 

How we do it

Our way of building target website lists could be faster, but when we decide to use the list, we are sure that we have built a list of qualified websites that are aligned with ours.

This is a long-term planning approach, and the main reason we are able to do this is that we don’t rush. We build the list gradually as we write articles on our blog. Here is how.

Before we write an article, we usually go to Google to do some research to map out the article. And there, we discover other sites that cover the same keywords. 

If we find the site interesting, the next step is to find out what service or product they offer to ensure it’s not a competitor and that the audience is relevant. 

This can be figured out just by reading the content on their homepage. The next step is to quickly check the website’s domain authority. Thanks to the Moz Chrome Bar Extension, we can do this in an instant. 

From there, we can clearly understand the website’s overall strength and whether we are interested. 

Keep in mind that this is not a strategy we have specifically designed to identify websites to target for our guest posts. No. 

This is all happening while we write other articles for our blog. When we find an interesting site, we file it in our spreadsheet and move on.

And the day we decide to run a guest posting blogger outreach campaign, we know where to find our targets. Here’s an example of how we keep them lined up in Google Sheets.

So, that’s how we eliminate the sweat when finding the websites to reach out to for blogger outreach link building. But since this is not something you had planned, there are other ways to do this.

Other ways you can do it

• Keyword research

Identify keywords related to your niche and use them to find relevant websites and blogs that cover similar topics. You should use an SEO tool for this. We recommend Ahrefs’ Content Explorer.  

• Competitor analysis

Look at the websites that link to your competitors’ websites and consider reaching out to those websites for a guest post opportunity. Here also, you’ll need an SEO tool. We recommend using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. 

• Google search

A simple Google search can also help you find authoritative sites that discuss the same topic as you and you can target them. Use Google search operators such as “guest post,” “write for us,” and “submit a guest post” to find relevant websites in your niche that accept guest posts.

• Industry events and conferences

You can attend industry events and conferences and network with bloggers and websites in your niche.

• Personal connections

Reach out to your network and ask for recommendations for websites in your niche that accept guest posts.

Step 2: Find who to reach out to, find their email address and build a list

By now, you’ve already created your list of the websites you want to target. At this point, you want to figure out the right person to contact at each of your target companies to get your cold email acted upon. 

Ideally, you want to reach out to the person in charge of the blog or someone in the position to understand the value you are bringing to their table and with authority to act upon your email. In most cases, that comes down to the following positions within the company:

• Head of Content
• Content Lead
• Content Marketing Officer
• Content Marketing Manager
• Head of Marketing
• Content Marketing Specialist 
• SEOs
• Etcetera. 

Here is how to find the person to contact at each company. 

Using the company’s website

The best place to find the people working at a company is on their website. Head over to their team, about page, or career page and find the best position to reach out to for your needs. 

Let’s take Ahrefs, for example. Go to the site. Scroll down to the lower fold of the page. Ideally, you are looking for these keywords Company – About – Team – Career – People. 

Then go to the page to see the team and find the person you are looking for. 

Using their blog

Sometimes, the company might not have a team page on its website to list the people working there and their different titles. An alternative tactic is to look at the company’s blog. 

Here, you want to find the name that publishes the most content on the blog. The person with the most content on their name will likely be the content team’s head. 

And even if they are not, they are still the right person to contact because they can easily link you with the manager you’re looking for. Let’s take the SparkToro blog as an example here.

Clearly, you’ll have a good chance of being heard if you reach out to Rand Fishkin.

Using LinkedIn

Go to your target website’s profile on LinkedIn and head over to their employee section to search for the position you are looking for to find the name you need. Suppose we are targeting Ahrefs.

Step one, going to Ahrefs’ profile on LinkedIn. 

Step two, click on “Employees” or “People” to find the people working there. 

Here are the different people working there.

Now you want to search keywords such as: 

• Head of Content
• Content Lead
• Content Marketing Officer
• Content Marketing Manager
• Head of Marketing
• Content Marketing Specialist 
• SEOs

Here is the result. 

Find their email address using Hunter’s Email Finder

You’ve got your target’s name and the company they work for. Go to Hunter’s Email Finder to find their email address easily. 

Suppose your target’s name is Ibrahim Litinine, and they’re at Nerdy Joe (nerdyjoe.com).

Hit the find button and get the email address.

Here is a screenshot example of how we keep everything lined up before our campaign. 

Note: If you can’t find the email address this way, we share more tactics for finding someone’s email address here. 

Step 3: Come up with a guest post content idea

You have your target websites and the accounts to send the cold emails figured out. Now, you need to find out what type of content you want to offer them so that they say yes. 

Do it right

The first thing you need to do here is research their website and thoroughly understand the type of content they publish and how they write it. 

You’ve probably done some good research before choosing your target website in the first place. But here, you must ensure that whatever content you bring to their table is aligned with their philosophy, target audience, overall business and marketing goals, etc. 

Simply put, your suggestion can make or break your link building strategy here. You can’t guess it. Research and come up with an excellent content idea.

Also, offering basic, what is, 800-word guest post ideas won’t cut it. That will sound like you are simply reaching out to whip up something that gets you a backlink without offering any real value in return. The content idea you pitch needs to be “dope”. 

Here are the two blogger outreach guest post content ideas that work for us.

Offer evergreen case studies

This is our go-to strategy at Nerdy Joe. When it comes to guest posting outreach, our main and most successful approach is to offer to create a case study for our target website. They are the easiest way to convince someone to let you post on their website. 

I mean, who doesn’t want to have a solid teardown of a company’s success case or marketing strategy on its website? It always works like a charm. Here are a few we’ve published over the years. 

On CoSchedule.

On RevGenius.

On Encharge.io

On The Good.

There are more. The main point of these examples is to show you that creating case studies and pitching them for guest posting works, really. 

Offer guides

Step-by-step guides also work really well for pitching guest post ideas. The target website’s audience will learn something specific, and they can genuinely benefit from the content. 

Here are a few examples that we did.

On Hunter.io

On Vidico.

Step 4: Craft your cold emails

This step is where you write your cold emails. There are three steps to that. 

Create icebreaker opening lines

The target prospects included in your blogger outreach campaign don’t know who you are. There is also a good chance they’ve never seen your website before. 

So, you are coming into the unknown, and you need a good first impression to catch their attention and hook them to read your cold email. 

Simple cold email opening lines like “I hope this email finds you well”, “Allow me to introduce myself”, etc., won’t cut it. 

What you need is an icebreaker. As the name implies, icebreakers are email opening lines designed to help you break the ice between you and your recipients. 

Here are the different things having an icebreaker means for your outreach:

1. an opening line that doesn’t strike the recipient like “I’m here for a backlink; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”
2. an opening line that rapidly differentiates you from other link building emails and hooks your target webmaster to read your email. 
3. a beginning sentence that makes your recipients feel valued and states that you did your research before reaching out to them. 
4. a phrase that indicates you know them personally and conditions them to be more receptive of your email and offer. 

So, instead of simple greeting opening lines, you take it a step further and bring exciting facts about the recipient to personalize the opening line and make it more impactful. 

And that’s how you can go from an email opening line that reads like:

“Hey, Ben

I hope this email finds you well.”

To an icebreaker that reads like:

“Hey, Marc

I was listening to your podcast with Xavier, and I have to admit that the take you had on marketing and sales alignment is pretty interesting. 

Nobody ever talks about how marketers have very little knowledge of the target audience’s actual needs and only make decisions based on guesses. More people need to hear this.

Also, I was playing around with your website and noticed that your content mainly covers email marketing services. 

I have an idea for a case study about a cold email campaign we run that I think your audience will love. I took the liberty to create a map of the content here {link}”.

Oops, I almost wrote the entire email. But it is interesting, yeah? 

But how do you do it? 

Well, glad you asked.

• Watch interviews and podcasts your target audience has participated in.
• Read blog posts and thought leadership articles they wrote or contributed to.
• Read their comments and posts on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Mastodon.
• Read their company’s new mentions.
• Etcetera 

You then combine the information you collected to find unique angles and craft personalized first lines or icebreakers.

Here is an example of keeping it all in a spreadsheet before the campaign.

Craft a compelling subject line

The subject line of your blogger outreach email is the first thing your target blog manager will see. It’s crucial to get it right to pick their attention and get them to open your cold email. 

A compelling subject line can make all the difference between a blogger outreach email that gets read and acted upon and one that gets ignored. 

Your goal is to craft a short phrase that catches your prospect’s attention and gets them interested in reading your cold email. 

You can do this by striking curiosity, bringing an interesting fact about their website or blog, complimenting them, etc. 

Here are some examples of best email subject lines we use in our link building efforts:

• Collaboration opportunity: [Blog Name]
• A [Niche] guest post that’s going to make waves
• A valuable resource for your readers: [Your Website]
• Join forces with [Your Website] for [Niche] domination
• Ready for a [Niche] adventure with [Your Website]?
• Let’s add some [Niche] sparkle with [Your Website]
• Partnering for [Niche] success
• A unique [Niche] guest post proposal
• Sharing [Your Website] with [Blog Name]

Here are some do’s and don’ts for your blogger outreach cold email subject lines:

• Do keep it professional.
• Do keep your subject line short and to the point. A subject line that is too long will be cut off and may not get noticed.
• Make it fun.
• Do make your subject line personal and relevant. This will make it more likely to catch the attention of your prospect.
• Do show your target why collaborating with you is a great idea.
• Don’t use all caps or excessive punctuation. This can make your subject line appear spammy and unprofessional.
• Don’t use generic, vague, or boring subject lines. A subject line like “Guest post request” is unlikely to get much attention.
• Don’t include any spam trigger words. Using such words in your subject line can get your email into the spam folder. 

Create a personalized email for each prospect

We believe in not sending the same email copy to two different people. We believe every prospect in our list is different and has unique needs and goals for their website.

So the same offer or email won’t resonate with all of them; that’s why we create a different email for every person we target. 

Here are some elements you can include in your cold emails to make them compelling and easily win backlinks. 

Prove that you know them

Personalization is a non-negotiable aspect of your emails here. If you can’t make the recipient feel like you know them personally, don’t send the email yet. 

Prove your value

Believe it or not, marketers or website owners usually have strong egos and are very meticulous about who they collaborate with.  Because of this, you may need to convince them that you are not just another spammer landing in their inbox. 

You do this by creating a compelling, super-personalized, and meaningful outreach email. Everything inside your cold email needs to be excellent and hook them. From your tone to the content idea you offer to create. You need to win against their ego.

Explain why you’re reaching out to them

You’ll need to highlight and detail the unique offer you’re bringing to their table and how it will be beneficial to their website and target audience. 

Hint at a relationship

You don’t want your recipients to read your pitch and feel like you’re just reaching out to get a link and disappear. Show them that you’ll continue to engage with their content and offer to help with future projects. This will even help to strengthen the relationship and increase the likelihood of future collaboration opportunities. Both parties will benefit from this. 

Create a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency in your email can help motivate the recipient to take action. For example, you can simply let them know that the collaboration would be especially valuable for you at this time. You only need to be subtle about this, don’t make it that much of an ask. 

End with a call to action

Of course, you’ll want to end the cold email with the clear next step you hope for your potential collaboration. Just let them know what action you want them to take and lead them on with a clear ask in your email. 

Step 6: Send your cold emails and follow up

You won’t get any results unless you send the outreach emails. So, send your emails and keep track of the bloggers you’ve reached out to and the positive response rate.

If you get positive feedback from your outreach, work on creating excellent content for them. It’ll make them fall in love with you, and you can win even more backlinks from their network. 

Also, you need to make following up an integral part of your strategy. CMOs, Content Leads, and SEOs, are really busy people striving to bring results to their websites. 

So, don’t be shocked when your emails go unanswered. You need to have follow-ups ready to reiterate the previous emails and give them a nudge to act. 

Get help with your blogger outreach link building

There you have it. Most link building blogger outreach campaigns fail to deliver good outcomes. But it does not have to be that way. 

At Nerdy Joe, we have perfectioned the best blogger outreach styles and tactics to reach out to influential CMOs, and content team leads to get backlinks from their sites. 

If you need blogger outreach services, here is what we can help you with:

• Finding target websites to get quality backlinks from.
• Target account research and list building.
• Coming up with the best pitch ideas and ideating them.
• Craft the outreach campaign emails and get your results. 
• Get your content posted and bring you backlinks. 

Ready to ace your backlink blogger outreach strategy? Talk to us. 

“Email marketing is dead.”

If you’re in B2B SaaS marketing, you’ve probably already been stunned by this unsubstantiated claim.

Ask any digital marketing guru what is the best channel for acquiring and retaining clients today, and some will tell you “social media.” Some would go “SEO,” and others would argue “paid ads.”

Well, they are all right.

Truth is, we all want to reach the light in the tunnel in the least amount of time possible. And to that end, every marketer or sales rep’ has their own idea about which digital marketing channel converts best.

But let’s face it: email is the only channel that you can own and get ROI from almost instantly.

For instance, we once sent a single email to a list of 5100 marketers, and it generated $17,000 within 48h. 

Another example is when Ernest sent a 100-word email, and it got us a $1400 per month client within 2 hours

Well, we can go on and on with these cases, but you can read them all on our case study page.

Email marketing is unarguably the best digital marketing strategy. Regardless of whether it’s confirmed by a guru or not.

In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about email marketing. And by the end, will be able to create and launch SaaS email marketing campaigns and ensure success.

Without further ado, let’s jump into it. 

This is a long and extensive blog post, so you may want to jump to the sections that appeal to you the most.

What Is An Email Marketing Campaign?

An email marketing campaign is a digital marketing strategy that consists of sending emails as a direct marketing medium to convert prospects into customers and turn one-time buyers into loyal and engaged customers. 

Think of it as a way to provide value to customers/users in the form of content through the various stages of the customer journey using dedicated funnels. 

8 Steps To Ace Your Email Marketing Campaign

Using the following tactics will help you get your emails to the right people, get them opened and read, and ultimately turn that attention into real revenue for your business. So let’s get started, starting with building an email list.

Step 1: Start your email marketing campaign by building an email list

Email marketing is like a puzzle game with many pieces. But as soon as you create your email list, all the other pieces will fall into place, and you can kick off your campaign. 

Your email list is the starting point for your campaigns for the simple reason that you can’t run any campaigns if you don’t have anyone to send the emails to. 

So, your first step should consist of building an email contact list. 

Here’s how…

Use the basic website opt-in form

Of the countless ways brands can capture email addresses, the simplest is to have a standard and straightforward opt-in form on your site. 

Why do you need an opt-in form?

An opt-in form allows you to collect essential information from a website visitor and add them to your mailing list. Here is an example from Nerdy Joe.

Opt-in forms also allow you to have control over your audience and the content you are nurturing them. 

Add an opt-in pop-up form on each page of your website

According to MailChimp data, email list growth rates increased by an average of 50.8% after adding a pop-up form to their site — making it a powerful lead-capture resource. 

Pop-up forms are typically small windows or specific types of layering that suddenly appear in the forefront of a website’s visual interface when a user/visitor clicks on a call-to-action or poses a given action. 

Pop-ups offer visitors a swift and seamless way to share their contact information and sign up for your list while they’re browsing your site. 

For instance, when a visitor is leaving your website, you can set an exit intent pop-up to appear so they can optin.

These are the types of pop-ups that appear when a visitor bids to depart your site and offer you one last chance to capture their email address.

The technology behind these pop-up forms tracks the movement of the mouse and triggers the pop-up form as the visitor seeks to close the site.

Just like in the image below…

Sumo claims that its users leverage exit intent pop-ups to increase conversions by over 60%. So while they can be annoying, they give you as much of a chance as any other technique.

Create a dedicated opt-in or sign-up landing page

The sole purpose of such a landing page is to get visitors to sign up and subscribe. 

This example from Campaign Monitor describes it best.

Dedicated sign-up or opt-in pages are one of the most effective ways to attract subscribers to build and grow your email list.

TELL A FRIEND

So, instead of directing visitors to your home page, which contains almost all the information about the various services you offer, you can focus on specific funnels that only seek to get them to sign up. 

Offer valuable incentives

Sometimes, to entice your visitors to subscribe to your email list, all you have to do is bring something relevant to their table in return. 

This works because it tells potential subscribers what they are into and what they will get for signing up. 

It may strike you like some fashion of bribery, but offering valuable incentives to your visitors not only gets them to sign up for your list but can also get them to buy from you. 

While this depends on your industry and the services you offer, there are many amazing incentives you can use to entice someone to sign up for your lists, such as a discount, promotion, or free shipping for a limited period.

Here is an example of a valuable incentive from Skinny DIP.

Step 2: Grow Your Email List

Building an email list and fishing are basically two sides of the same coin. 

Think of it; fishermen don’t throw their nets in the water and leave them there to see if the fish is hooked or not. Instead, they keep adding lures for the fish on the hook. 

The same goes for lead capture.

Putting a simple opt-in or a pop-up opt-in form on your website and hoping people will sign up is not enough.

TELL A FRIEND

Opt-in forms do work. But while they do, you need to keep attracting more and more people with new lead generation strategies, basically like adding lures on the hook. 

Here are some of the tactics you can use to grow your email list.

Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a sign-up ‘bribe’, usually a free service or item, that you give away to collect contact information from your visitors. 

There are many types of lead magnets you can give away to capture email addresses, and you won’t have to jump through hoops to create one.

It can be a free trial, templates, PDFs, media files, and white papers. 

Here is an example from Giosg.

Based on the content the visitor engages with on the website, Giosg offers a relevant item to pique their interest and collects their email address as they request it. 

Case in point, in the example below, Giosg offers a comprehensive guide to website lead capture best practices to collect emails from visitors who view their article on high-conversion tactics for websites.

And as the visitors click on the download button, this is what happens:

For your lead magnet to be effective, you need to have a clear idea of who you are targeting. 

You need a buyer persona, and based on that, you can identify and create something valuable for them. 

Free ebooks, webinars, coupons, and tip or resource sheets are examples of magnets that work best. 

Referral Programs

In the email world, a referral program is simply a concept of encouraging and rewarding your subscribers to spread the word about your product or service. 

Here is an example from Ryan Deiss’ Scalable newsletter.

The goal is to get your current subscribers to tell their friends, family, and industry colleagues about your amazing company or the great services you offer to get them to subscribe as well. 

How effective are referral programs?

B2B marketing experts observed that referrals have an average conversion rate of 11%. 

Additionally, customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate than customers acquired through other marketing channels.

Social Media

There is a lot of talk about the inefficiency of social media platforms. Yet, the truth remains. 

The perfect places to collect email addresses are the places where your target audience hangs out.

Social media is a powerful tool for lead generation. For example, according to Backlinko data, Instagram alone has 500 million daily active users.

What’s more, 90% of those users already follow businesses.

That is, every company can easily convert its followers into email subscribers. 

The catch is that once on social media, most businesses focus on growing their followers while ignoring their email list. 

Here are a few strategies to grow your email list from social media.

• Creating a dedicated lead generation landing page for your social media profiles.

Here is a Facebook example.

And as users click, they’re redirected to a dedicated landing page.

Here is another Facebook example from Marvel.

Here is a good LinkedIn example from John Bonini promoting gated podcast content.

• Creating contests or sweepstakes programs.
• Hosting webinars (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook).
• Creating tutorials with call-to-action cards (Youtube, LinkedIn).
• Creating and promoting gated visual content (Pinterest).

Step 3: Choose an email marketing service provider (ESP) tailored to your needs to run your email marketing campaign

Now that you’ve built and grown your email list, the next step in the mix is to send your email campaigns. And to ensure accuracy and effectiveness while running your campaigns, you will need a good email service provider (ESP). 

ESPs bring it to anyone’s ken to easily manage their email campaigns and send their emails as a breeze. 

Here are some of the ways an email marketing service provider can help your business.

• Sending permission-based emails by aligning with ISP rules and permission policies. 
• Ensuring deliverability and making sure your email campaigns don’t end up in the spam folder.
• Respecting your subscribers’ privacy and giving them the ability to unsubscribe with a single click.
• Automatically performing the essential list management tasks, such as signing up new subscribers, allowing subscribers to edit their own profiles, and giving them the ability to unsubscribe.
• Guaranteeing that your emails are delivered in the right format by allowing you to send both a text and HTML version of each message you send.
• Providing you with detailed reports to track key metrics and see how your campaigns compare to industry standards, such as open rate, click-through rate, click-to-open rate, unsubscribe rate, etc.
• Ensuring that your emails are compliant with important legislation such as CAN-SPAM and CASL.
• And many more.

Top 4 Commendable Email Service Providers (Email marketing SaaS comparison)

There are hundreds of software that offer email marketing services out there. So choosing the right service can be tricky or challenging. 

Fortunately enough, our good friends at ContentMavericks analyzed the top 50 email marketing service providers and came up with the top five email marketing solutions you can choose from to scale your email marketing success in 2021. 

1. ActiveCampaign
2. SendFox
3. ConvertKit
4. Constant Contact

1- ActiveCampaign

When it comes to email marketing services, ActiveCampaign offers la crème de la crème.

ActiveCampaign helps businesses across the planet optimize their customers’ experiences thanks to powerful email features.

It offers companies the best mix of email marketing tools and services, such as pre-built automation, a comprehensive collection of email templates, and effective contact management.

ActiveCampaign has the highest email deliverability rates in the industry over time. 

And overall, their tool is one the best email marketing software that beats all other tools by striking the perfect combination of automation and human touch and by combining customer insights with your business at a price everyone, from novice marketers to professionals, can afford.

2- SendFox

SendFox is an email marketing tool that allows you to create, schedule, automate, and send an unlimited number of personalized emails. 

It is great when it comes to sending weekly broadcast emails or sending your campaign emails in a loop with little to no cost. 

In a sense, it’s a less advanced version of ActiveCampaign. And it has no advanced features such as contact scoring, list segmentation, CRM, etc. 

3- ConvertKit

ConvertKit is the ideal email marketing software for beginners and businesses with a small budget. 

It is the best free alternative to the two above-mentioned solutions and one of the most successful and rapidly growing email marketing solutions.

ConvertKit makes it easy for any business to create, automate and send customized email marketing campaigns. 

And as long as your email list is less than 1,000 subscribers and you don’t need to access any of the premium features, you can use it for free. 

ConvertKit claims a higher deliverability rate than most free tools. It offers customizable signup forms and landing pages to help you attract more subscribers, as well as two free courses. 

One on how to get your first 100 subscribers and the second on how to make your first dollar online. And guess what? They’re all included in the free plan.

4- Constant Contact

Constant Contact brings email marketing to the feet of any business down to beginners with no website.

It provides users with a plethora of easy-to-use marketing tools to create and run their email marketing campaigns, build AI-powered websites, create online stores, and launch Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns to capture new contacts and build email lists. 

It also offers businesses an abundance of advanced features such as: 

• Free email template builder, 
• customizable pop-up forms, 
• a full library of mobile-friendly templates,
• email automation tools, 
• marketing automation,
• drag-and-drop editing tools, 
• integrations, 
• and reporting tools. 

Step 4: Segment your email list for a targeted and personalized email marketing campaign

Email list segmentation is a strategy you can use to structure your email subscribers into groups or segments based on:

• behavior, 
• interests, 
• familiarity with your company, 
• demographics, 
• etc.

According to MailChimp, segmenting your email list can increase open rates by nearly 14.31% and reduce bounce rates by nearly 4.65%.

That is, just by breaking down your email list into the right segments, you’ll increase your SaaS email marketing performance and ultimately get more conversions, more purchases, and more satisfied customers. 

Here is how you can effectively segment your email list.

• Create different subscriber personas

To the extent possible, every company should know as much as possible about its customers or potential customers. 

1. Where do they live? 
2. What are the different places they go? 
3. What problems do they face? 
4. What do they want to accomplish? 
5. What are their careers and incomes? 
6. What are their interests and behaviors? 
7. How can your company help them achieve their goals? 
8. What is a day in their life like? 

Well, depending on your strategy and field, the list goes on and on… 

Customer personas are the foundation of your list segmentation, as they help you define which segments need which message. If you miss out on this, nothing else matters. 

• Create your content accordingly

Now that you know and understand your customers or subscribers and have decided how to segment them, you need to create the content they want. Doing so will allow you to strike a better chord with them.

Step 5: Decide which type of email marketing campaign works best for you

There are different types of email. 

The one thing you need to keep in mind when sending out your campaigns is that you should not send exclusively promotional emails.

Sending only salesy emails adds no real value to your customers or sales prospects. Eventually, they will lose interest, and your content will come across as a repetition of the same type of information from a pushy salesperson.

TELL A FRIEND

Here are the main types of emails you can send to your recipients to keep them interested and engaged with your business. 

• Newsletter

Both SaaS and eCommerce businesses widely use email newsletters to send educational emails to maintain relationships with their prospects and customers simply because it is the most effective email marketing type.

The main purpose of a newsletter is to inform and educate contacts about a topic of interest or updates pertaining to your business, products, updates, special offers, and services. 

A newsletter can be sent regularly: quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even daily. 

However, be careful not to overwhelm your busy recipients and encourage them to either fly over the message or not read it at all.

• Announcement

An announcement email is a publicizing email that a company sends to its contacts to inform them of changes in its business, a new product, a recent update, the launch of a limited edition, or an upcoming event. 

The ultimate goal of an announcement email is to get the audience eager and hungry about forthcoming products or events.

So, an effective announcement email clearly states the email’s subject and tells the audience why the message is important or how they will benefit from your product or service (for example, how your product will help solve their problem).

It also briefly describes the upcoming product, service, or event to showcase the new value offered to pique the audience’s interest and prompt them to take the desired action.

• Event Invitation

An event invitation email is an email sent to your subscribers announcing an upcoming event to entice them to attend. 

The event could be a webinar, conference, or any kind of presentation that your company is hosting. 

To entice your subscribers to come or attend your event, you need to tell them exactly what’s in it for them. Are they going to learn? Are they going to network? 

In your event invitation emails, always provide enough information about your event and details such as time, date, location, and duration.

• Marketing Offer

You need to keep your customers and sales prospects posted about your marketing offerings. 

Marketing emails can include several things, including the launch of a new product, a limited-edition release, a special promotion, an upcoming event, or the option to pre-order a product. 

You don’t need to fill your marketing emails with salesy words for them to be effective. You only need to explain to your customers how your solutions will help solve their problems or make their life easier. 

So simply explain the features of the offer, so your readers know what you’re talking about and spice it up with the benefits of the new product. 

That way, they will understand how it meets their needs and why they should be interested. And for that, you need a beautiful sales email.

• Survey Invitation

Here, the researcher generally presents the survey invitation email as a data collection procedure that seeks to gather both qualitative and quantitative data from the customers/users for improvements in the overall business and customer experience. 

This goes down to creating survey instruments, typically a questionnaire that is sent to a cherry-picked handful of customers via email. 

Recipients will then simply answer the questions or elaborate responses to the thought-provoking questions in the embedded links or respond via email.

Here is another example from Slack…

Step 6: Create a campaign and draft your email copy

Creating an email campaign is as straightforward as putting together a two-piece cake. 

Using email marketing service providers, users generally navigate through a series of steps that go from creating a campaign to choosing a template to kick-start the drafting of the actual campaign email.

Now to make sure your email is good to go, there are a few things you need to check depending on the type of email you want to send.

But in general, every email has three main parts. We’ve broken down each part into its different components to help you write your email perfectly.

1. The Header

The header is made up of the different elements that your recipients see when your email hits their inbox.

The elements you put in the header are the basis for your recipients to decide if your message is worth reading, and as such, has a direct impact on the performance of your campaign—especially your deliverability and open rate.

A good header usually contains three elements.

2. The From Line

Also known as the “sender’s name,” the “from” line tells your customers or prospects who the email is from. 

It can be the company’s email address or a personalized email account of a senior company official, usually the CEO.

This means that you will need to run some tests to determine which one your recipients like better. 

But it has been observed that emails from personalized accounts generate a higher response rate. 

So, rather than using your company name, use a personalized account that refers to the actual sender, which will boost your open rates.

3. The Subject Line

It’s no news to email marketers: your subject line can make or break your email campaign. You design and tweak it to give your recipients a taste of what your actual message is about.

For this reason, your subject line should engage your recipients from the start. If they hate it, your campaign goes downhill from there.

Here is a simple yet great example from Nerdy Joe’s own Ernest.

Your subject line should be short and to the point, usually 7-10 words for a higher open rate, personal, addressed to only one person, and action-oriented in order to entice them to click and read the actual message. 

Take a look at how short subject lines perform:

4. The Preheader

The preheader is a few words from the email introduction that appears in the inbox preview as a tail of your subject line.

Again, recipients can read the few words that make up your preheader and decide whether or not to open your email. 

Here is an example from Andrei Zinkevich from ROI Plan.

However, its relevance hinges upon the devices and your email marketing service provider. Anyway, a rule of thumb is to make it mobile-friendly, as 70% of people receive their emails on their mobile phones. 

5. The Body

Whatever the purpose of your email campaign, nothing happens until your customers or prospects read the content of the email and take the desired action. 

To achieve this, your recipients must first open your message and then click on the links in your call-to-action. 

Here are a few tips to help you write your email body to perfection.

• Keep it direct and simple

While people spend very little time reading emails, they receive dozens of emails every day that try to sell them something. Your email content needs to stick out. In your email body, your goal is to educate, and drive action with an eventual purchase, but you don’t need many words to achieve this.

The most successful emails are distinctive for their brevity, conciseness, and, ultimately, their straightforwardness.

As such, it would be best to find the right language to address your recipients’ pain points, no need to make it wordy. Instead, keep it short, clear, simple, and direct.

• Include visuals

A picture is worth a thousand words, everybody says. So, put what you want to say into a few words and spice it up with pictures. It is advisable to put a cover image at the top of the display and smaller images scattered throughout your content. 

However, be mindful and don’t just put images for the sake of it. Your pictures should resonate with your content and overall campaign objectives.

• Focus on readability

Format your content to entice your recipients to read it. Your content needs to be scannable. Regardless of your readership, no one wants to read emails with overly long paragraphs.

So chop up the paragraphs into shorter lines of text, and if the email seems too long, reduce the text. You can also use layout to break up space and help create chunks of content.

• Keep your design consistent

First, you need to establish a style guide and build or choose a template that fits your campaigns and readership. 

The design of your emails should allow your recipients to identify and read what appeals to them most first and then move on to where they want. They should be able to quickly skim the email in a well-organized layout, with large headings and images to grab attention.

Also, when it comes to email design, most marketers tend to advocate HTML emails. Granted, HTML ensures user experience, eye-catching display, and brand consistency and, as such, thrives for it.

But the truth is that HTML email can be a security risk. This is mainly because HTML emails are not always readable, can contain junk and viruses, and ultimately will not appeal to your readership.

And when it comes to deliverability rate, the hedge goes to plain text emails. So, you may want to go slow on the use of HTML in your emails.

Read more: How To Write A Follow-up Email After No Reply (+ 10 Templates)

• Include multiple calls to action (CTA)

Including multiple CTAs does not necessarily mean including tons of calls to action in your email content. Don’t just place a single CTA at the bottom of your content and wait to see who clicks or not.

Instead, you can, for example, increase your click-through rates by including 3 calls to action in your email but at different places so that they don’t seem repetitive. 

6. The Footer

By now, you have what you need to succeed in getting your recipients to read and take the hoped-for action. Now it’s time to design the email footer. 

Your footer won’t get them to read your email; in fact, this stretches beyond the scope of email marketing, but it will ensure they stay engaged with you. 

Here are the two elements you need to include in your footer.

• Contact Information

Contact information can be anything from your company’s physical address to a link to your company’s accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and any other social network you use. 

Adding contact information will help your business comply with federal anti-spam laws and ultimately provide you with more ways to engage with your customers or prospects.

• Unsubscribe Links

Offer your recipients the option to opt out of your mailing list. This will increase your unsubscribe rate, but you will only be able to keep people who relate to your business. In addition, offering them the option to unsubscribe is also mandatory to comply with anti-spam laws. 

Step 7: Automate your email marketing campaign

You successfully created and segmented your email list; you chose the email marketing service that works best for you, you selected the type of email you want to send, you created your campaign, and you wrote your email.

Now it’s time to automate that process to send mass emails to your segments of subscribers while focusing on adding value and driving more sales prospects. And automating your email marketing campaigns boils down to enabling autoresponders.

What is an autoresponder email?

Autoresponders are email marketing programs that are used to automate the process of sending campaign emails. 

Once set up, an autoresponder is prompted by specific actions such as:

• subscribing to your email list, 
• a certain browsing behavior, 
• cart abandonment, 
• a customer service request, 
• downloading an ebook or purchasing a product, 
• or scheduling to launch over time.

Every online business needs a series of autoresponders as part of its email marketing strategy to nurture prospects and deliver useful information about products, services, or promotions. 

It’s a cost-effective way to send relevant content to your various segments, and you don’t have to spend time and energy writing each message. 

Here is an example of an email sent from an autoresponder.

Awesome, huh? Now you may be wondering how to create an effective autoresponder series for your business. We got you covered.

Set a goal for your autoresponder

Your autoresponder can help you send any email you want. And if you choose, you can schedule the process – once a week, once a day, or on specific days of the week – and send your emails like a breeze. 

Here are some common purposes for which you can set up your autoresponder series. 

• Welcome email sequence

A welcome email is an email you send to welcome a new subscriber or customer after signing up for your email list. 

Your welcome email series should contain a simple thank you note for signing up and potentially a call to action to check out the most popular articles on your blog. 

But it doesn’t have to be lengthy to be effective. It just has to be brief and straightforward. 

• A lead magnet

You can use your autoresponder to send a series of emails containing lessons or other valuable information to drive new subscribers to your mailing list. 

This is usually done in the form of a free “mini-course” that you promise to deliver over several days or weeks. 

• Sales on autopilot

This strategy is widely used by SaaS startups, eCommerce businesses, and many other online service providers. 

Using an autoresponder to make sales on autopilot involves creating a sales funnel based on an email autoresponder. 

In other words, it is creating a sequence of emails that are automatically sent to your customers or prospects along the various stages of the customer journey that ultimately leads them to make a purchase.

• Up-sells and cross-sells

These are emails suggesting products that are either complementary or associated with the ones the customer has just purchased.

Depending on the products you sell, you can offer an upsell by recommending related products or asking users to upgrade to a higher plan. 

For example, if a customer buys shoes, you can offer to add socks before shipping. 

Or if you are a SaaS company selling a service, you can ask your customers to upgrade based on the different plans you have.

In the case of cross-selling, for example, if you sell products that people frequently buy, such as food or renewable service, you can automatically send them offers for new items based on when their product will end up or the time of their last purchase.

Map out your autoresponder sequence

Now there are a few questions you need to address. 

How long do you want your sequence to be? How many days? How far apart should each email be sent? How many emails? How much time, money, and effort are you willing to invest in your email marketing campaign?

This is an essential part of your automation process, as you need to strike a healthy balance between your audience, your marketing strategy, and the goal you chose in the first place.

So you will need to map out your email sequence based on data such as your segments, your subscribers’ preferences, and the goal you want to achieve to ensure you get it right.

Write your autoresponder series

Most people like to hire email copywriters to write their autoresponder email series, and they do so for a good reason. At Nerdy Joe, we offer email marketing services and can write an entire email sequence for you at $799. If interested, choose a plan here. 

However, if you think you have what it takes and still want to write the emails by yourself, you need to:

• Write an attention-grabbing subject line

If your recipients don’t get past the subject line, your campaign is doomed to fail. And the success of your subject line is all about grabbing your recipients’ attention.

If it doesn’t grab their attention, it means it’s not interesting to them, and they won’t read it. Your subject line is, therefore, as important as the goal you want to achieve with your campaign. 

Take your time and create a subject line that will leave your subscribers wanting to know more. Make it personal, pique their interest, and create curiosity about the content of the email.

• Ensure that the content is focused on the reader

Remember! No one signed up for your mailing list to read content about your company.

Instead, they did so because they find your content valuable to them and want some more. So you have to give them what they expect. 

Of course, your ultimate goal is to make as many dollars as possible, but you won’t make a dime if your prospects aren’t interested in your email content. 

You need to focus on them, how to help them with their problems, and suggest ways to solve them and make their lives easier. 

• Personalize your content

Let’s look at some examples of subject lines: 

1. 3 Brand Awareness Tips for your SaaS company
2. 5 Steps to Build Brand Awareness

Assuming you are a SaaS business owner, which of these two subject lines are you most likely to read?

Well, no doubt you went down the SaaS road.

The point is that personalizing your emails will make them more appealing to your subscribers. 

Generic emails as the second one no longer work, and personalizing simply by saying “Hi, Joe” at the top of the email is even less effective.

Now that you have automated the sending of your emails, the one thing you need to do is monitor the campaign, track how your business compares to your industry standards, and eventually find room for improvements. And this brings us to the next and last step.

Step 8: Track industry benchmarks, define your KPIs, and measure your performance

Tracking email marketing industry benchmarks provides companies with valuable data to understand their success or lack thereof.

Besides, it will give you an overview of how your campaign is performing compared to other companies in your industry and the email marketing industry.

This will help you identify the different areas in your emails that need tweaking to improve the performance of your campaigns.

Before we dive in, here are the email marketing benchmarks.

Metrics	Industry benchmarks
Open rate	18.00%
Click-through rate	2.60%
Click-to-open rate	14.10%
Unsubscribe rate	0.10%
Bounce rate	0.70%

Now here are the industry performance indicators you need to be tracking.

• Open rate

The open rate is the proportion of emails that were opened by your recipients after a campaign was sent. 

To know your open rate, simply divide the number of emails opened by the number of emails delivered. The result should then be multiplied by 100 to obtain your percentage rate.

For example, if you sent a campaign to 24 of your customers and 22 of them opened it, the opening rate will be 91.66%.

• Click-to-open rate

This is the percentage of recipients who both opened the email and clicked on a link. It is the number of clicks made in your email divided by the number of emails opened. 

You then multiply by 100 to get the percentage of your click-to-open rate. 

The click-to-open rate helps you assess the performance of your campaign by telling you how effective your content is in terms of the people that opened it.

• Click-through rate

The click-through rate is the number of clicks made within your email divided by the number of emails sent. You then multiply by 100 to get your click-through rate. 

When it comes to your click-through rate, the higher, the better, as it determines whether you are targeting the right audience or not and helps you know if your content is convincing enough to get them to click on the link. 

In addition, it tells you what is working and what needs to be improved. 

• Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate refers to the percentage of your subscribers who decided to remove themselves from your mailing list after receiving an email.

You can easily calculate your unsubscribe rate by dividing the total number of unsubscribes by the number of emails delivered. You then multiply the result by 100 to get your unsubscribe rate.

This metric has a direct impact on your email content. It’s essentially a red flag that your audience isn’t relating to the content you’re providing or that you are not addressing their pain point. 

• Bounce rate

Bounces are emails that are not delivered to the recipient. In this regard, the bounce rate represents the percentage of emails that did not reach the recipients due to an error with the ISP, the email address, or your email services provider like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.

To calculate your bounce rate, you take the total number of bounced emails and divide it by the total number of emails sent. You then multiply by 100 to get your bounce rate.

How To Create An Email Campaign: Key Takeaways

• When it comes to email campaign success, your ability to build quality lists, segment your email list and create personalized emails is what will make the difference between you and most of your competitors. 
• Always ensure that you use the right email service provider for business. Also, always warm up your domain to ensure a good deliverability rate for your email campaigns. 
• When drafting your emails, keep in mind that you must always ensure your campaign emails are simple and easy to understand. As well, you will need to personalize your emails to each of your recipients. 
• Sometimes, especially in sales, you will need to send more than one email across your campaign. Keep in mind that the same rules apply and that you must always seek to provide value first.